The Reality Guys say they are doing real stuff, and most everyone else (maybe you included), aren't doing real stuff. Real stuff is good, unreal stuff is bad.
The problem with this from a pragmatic viewpoint is that the observation is highly contextual. What's real? What's fake? What was fake then might be real now. What's at the verge of being real might be fake the next moment.
Hesiod's dad really didn't like the ocean and Hesiod shared this opinion. He went for the farm life and thought that if he could manage a farm and get along with his neighbors, well then you're 99% there. The sea is not easy and the guys who like it, like it a lot, but they know it's tough.
Yet maybe Hesiod was a fake. After all, he waxed and waned about a lost past, said he wished he could have been with another team. That doesn't make him a bad guy. He's just getting something off his chest, and by doing so he extends a range of emotions which maybe make people happy, maybe help people cope. He helped me cope, and that's interesting because he's 2815 years older than me, far past my current Master's division.
This is why I don't have any issue with the pessimists. They are basically describing to people some thing that gets them down and they are facing it and telling about it. That helps other people and the story is interesting.
I read a book about a guy who did a hard job in Alaska, a very hard job. I was so intrigued about the story that I went to Alaska and did this hard job. It was a very hard job.
Lots of stuff was hard. You had little. I finally was given a cheap mountain bike by the HR lady at this hard job. There was no bike store so for chain grease: I either went to the oil disposal place or I took a little bit of excess off the red chain grease from a fork lift. A couple times a neighbor of mine stole my mountain bike to go fishing because he didn't think I was using it.
I still wonder about what is real and fake. I'm taking this CPA exam and I'm going to be a big boy. I try telling my friends sometimes about fishing or bike riding but it doesn't register. I'm fast again and women tell me they like my body. I don't know if that's real or fake. Sometimes I worry about dying, sometimes I don't give a shit. Whether that's real or fake I can't tell.
My brain is a mix of languages and experiences. I've lived 11% of my life outside 'my country.' Maybe that 11% was real, maybe fake.
I'm a sucker for human beings. I like to hear them tell their stories. I like to ask them questions. I like to learn things from other people. I like to watch Henry Rollins on Youtube. I like the blonde British woman who runs 5 minute miles with me. She is so pretty and sexy.
I'm both old and young and desperate. I want to tell my story. I don't want to be sad, isolated, and blocked by prisons I've set up but whose wardens have long abandoned.
I'm lucky I discovered the bicycle. Here where I live there's big traffic but also a big amount of people who ride their bikes to and from where they are going and the bike riders aren't existentially constipated like the people who drive the cars.
At the stoplight today I counted the people who drove by and said things. 'That's a guy, that's a gal, man, she's pissed, man, he's holding on.' I don't do commentary on the bike riders, but maybe I should. 'Man, she's so free she could ride up that hill for no good reason. Man, that guy rides so fast, he could ride to Leander and no one would blame him.'
You're now devolving into oblivion. And that might be the best place to be. The CPA exam is a waste of time and energy (unless its not)
ReplyDeleteDevolving can be fine if you are looking for ideas. The fish pulled from the boat, is he devolving. The diesel fuel in the engine, it it devolving. When it was crude oil, untouched just 4 years ago, deep in shale rock, was it devolving. Depends on the squint. No one is thinking about fishing right now. Even the guy who is setting a string is thinking about Hawaii. He stinks and he is cold and tired. If I had the money I'd be fishing. But it's a huge business enterprise and an under-capitalized boat will fail. It is also highly regulated and much insurance is required. Getting a 'job' on a fishing boat is virtually impossible. The best way to fish is to be born into a fishing family or to go to Alaska, build a home, and jump into it well-capitalized. According to the AICPA, and that is a large, collective squint, a CPA means a rewarding career. How often these rewards arrive depends on the squint. I really I hope I had nothing to do with the depreciation of the Brazilian currency. I broke up with that Brazilian gal and right after that happened the economy got in trouble. Even if were direct cause of such precipitous depreciation of the currency, I can't figure out how to make it stop or why it matters. I feel sorry about the depreciation of the currency, but if I were short the currency, if I could have predicted its demise, then I would be happy, because happiness is just good trading, unless that becomes stifling and then sea kayaking is the new thing, then that would be happiness.
DeleteWhat holds up 'asset prices' and REIT companies is everyone holding their breath. The world is shaped by people staring at computers. Everyone in this library is staring at a computer. You can see the capital from here. Sunlight always flows in through the windows during the day. You will always see Indians from India at the library, because Indian students are generally very diligent about studying.
Being "short" currency - is that like having no cash and instead having stuff you bought when the currency was worth more?
DeleteREIT asset prices that drive the "net asset value" of the REIT are totally bonkers. But, as they say, if you wouldn't buy at this price, you should be a seller.
I make efforts each day to try to describe why one asset price should be here, why one asset price should be there. I read all the articles on Seeking Alpha, which I really like, but some people might think is a waste of time (esp. the algorithmic traders, who don't really care about expressing their opinions in language). But I have stock investments and *very* minor positions in options, from time to time, and for me I do get an understanding of things from putting money into asset classes. I am watching the massive depreciation of the Brazilian currency because 200b of debt is dollar-denominated and there could be a spill-over effect. Short selling is a magic trick that I don't yet understand but I've always said I understand perfectly well.
DeleteI watched a great movie last night about the Edward Snowden saga. The reporter who reported the story is also the movie maker as well as a star in the movie. He is an intelligent man. Several scenes in the movie were filmed in brazil, where he spoke to Brazilians of the American government's spying activities on the electronic communications of ordinary citizens who are not suspected nor accused of any wrong doing. The Brazilian he spoke was easy for my mind to hear and comprehend.
ReplyDeleteI have begun to branch out socially and am nurturing wavering and loose relationships with many people. I am putting much energy into my relationship with the kings forest and the roadways and trails around this fantastic place. But the biggest and most difficult challenge is to manage my relationship with this job and the money it produces. On one hand I really like being here at my job and I love what I do. On the other hand it is completely meaningless int he long term.
I look at it more as a confusion born of naming and legibility. When something is made legible it is in some sense created. To speak of real and fake is particularly troubling because it sets up a binary value system. The schitzophrenic is driven to his conclusions and visions because he gets caught up in this legible world, confused and mislead by language--particularly the inside/outside, mind/body, me/others stuff.
ReplyDeleteSilence may mean disappearing. But a careful, selective, forgetting of certain words can leave a man really living. Living not for himself and his happiness, but for all and in everything.
My encouragement of AK fishing helped to set this fake/real thing up. But its really nonsense. Just because you can bleed doing it doesnt make it any better. Its just the oldest things, the ones with teh most history, the ones that inspire a nostalgia, are activites and work that bleeds. Men in cubicles sitting before computers have hard time bleeding unless it is from the eyes.
ReplyDeleteI have been a fool and a dilettante. I have discovered nothing really. There was nothing after all to be found. These working class exercises were no different than any other economic exercise. Indeed, the oldest and most important things were always there, its just that I ignored them. For all the talk of shitting out the West, I have been acting in a very western way, a way only a man of the west could act.
ReplyDeleteIt has been a project that had to fail. Failure was its only possibility. A man trying to live larger or beyond his epoch will be seen by some as heroic, yet it is the hero and he alone who truly understands his achievement. The achievement of his life is become lonely and alone. The hero is finally pathetic.
If you had arrived in Alaska in the 80s, assuming you didn't sink your boat during the derby season, fishing was in a golden era then. You probably would have had a huge cocaine habit however. Bond trader, strippers, and fishermen snort a lot of cocaine. Today, IFQs cost a fortune, regulation is a pain, and a few fines can wipe out a boat.
ReplyDeleteI plan on saving up some money and then exploring more countries and hopefully building a cabin.
I have running practice tonight--today it's a 3-mile hilly tempo run and I'll probably be 3rd or 4th place.
ReplyDeleteWe all have our moments of bravery. I remember when I was living in my truck and I was very cold. I told my parents of my 'car camping.' Tucker and I slid down ice-covered hills in that truck. I saw the old believer village. My point is that now I'm in Austin, I still see good things. Maybe it's because each night there is live music and people dance. Maybe it's because the women are pretty. People gather and re-create. I'm going to run fast this year.
ReplyDelete"3rd or 4th" - hope its 3rd. You gotta beat that 4th place guy mentally. Probably you guys have about the same physical ability (though I doubt he is 40) but mentally, you're much tougher. Beat him with your mind. Make him suffer. Make him 4th.
ReplyDeleteI finished 3rd, but I made her, not him, 4th. I'm fine with that. If you look at all the events in track an field, the ratio of female to male performance is .89 in all events at the highest level. First place was a semi-pro triathlete, second was one of those guys who runs fast but doesn't look like he should, third place was myself running alone in the heat, trying to hold off the blonde chick who was gaining on me with a mile to go. I ended up putting 30 seconds on her at the end climbing hill. There were 40 people there and all of them had different stories. I ran through an intersection and a one car, a person in the car, actually, laid on the horn. Damn runner, he thought to himself. Maybe that guy had a whole different take on the run. It seems like more women than men have tattoos these days. Tattoos look different on a person as the person ages.
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