Jump to content

The Original Greaser Bob

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    1715
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by The Original Greaser Bob

  1. 10 hours ago, GoPokes83 said:

    As a Republican I say fuck Trump with a giant cactus. That douche has crippled the party for at least 2-3 election cycles.

    As a former young Republican, I say I hope you are off by about 28-27 election cycles.  I want my old party burned to the fucking ground, and its unrepentant members defenestrated, hung, drawn* and quartered.

    * the bad kind

    hugh-despenser-the-younger-dfd3b353-b2ff

     

    • Hook 'Em 5
  2. About halfway through the three volumes (audio - roughly 60 hours) of The Power Broker by Robert Caro. 

    There are no words that I can come up to describe how brilliant this whole endeavor is.  Caro basically can do a brilliant mini-novel to disfunctional brotherhood, followed by a laughably readable tome on transit authorities, followed by a heartbreaking short history of the distruction of colonial New York.

    99% Invisible is doing a "read along" this year of the book, which should be fun -- I'm a huge Roman Mars fan - dudes radio voice and laugh just make me smile.  Here is the first "intro" intstallment with Conan O'Brien, who is a huge Caro fan.

    https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/breaking-down-the-power-broker/

    images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS0z8BiRGBIKjfmrhcye6T

    images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSBR3v6BUF4fAR2XEMHEpX

     

    The Lyndon Johnson biographies are arguably the greatest books I've ever read.  And now this.

     

  3. On 1/3/2024 at 2:38 AM, longhornmatt said:

    Watched The Sound of Music for the first time in forever recently.  There are nods to the political situation throughout so I suppose it’s always there in the background, but there was still a pretty abrupt change from:

    “Doe, a deer, a female deer … oh that Maria has made the children play clothes from the curtains! What will she think of next! … Ray, a golden drop of sun” 

    to

    “Ok, children, tonight we’re going to hide from the Nazis!  Yes, that’s right we will be going ‘Far, a long long way to run’ - very good, kids. But seriously though, they’re actual Nazis so stop singing and just STFU for a while so we don’t die.”

    There was a great podcast I heard a few years ago about a girl who grew up only having the first of a two VHS set of the movie. 

    She spent her entire life thinking the movie ended with the hot older child falling in love with the handsome Nazi kid and saying "Wheeeeeeee!".

    Only when she was in college did she see the whole movie and she was all like "oh snap".

  4. I've got a nice old bang and olufsen turntable 40+ years old that has been sitting around for 30 years.  I went to hook it up with the similarly aged tecnnics tuner which is dead.   Have on old passive speaker.  If I get this thing set up I'll probably attach an old Sony carousel CD player.

    I'm looking for just simple basic amp/tuner and a couple of small passive speakers to set up.  Room is small -- not looking for power or anything particularly high fidelity.  Just something to play my old records.  Will probably end up using headphones most of the time.  May eventually move this to a larger room but will be in my shitty man cave for now.

    Any particular brands of "solid value" components that you all can recommend?  I'm not really interested in radio so I am thinking amp instead of tuner that I can run the iphone through.

     

  5. 6 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    It would be nothing for Abbott and Paxton to declare that Biden's "impeachable" offenses are treasonous to the US and remove him from the ballot.

    I'd rather we have principles that bad people can try to break than no principles at all.

    • Hook 'Em 2
  6. 41 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

    Just my opinion, but political capital is real, even a the Supreme Court. 

    So is being an asshole, and there are certainly two members on that court who will straight up do their best to be assholes, just for the fun of it.

  7. My mom recently passed away and so I am working on getting the finances in order.  Both parents were both Texas teachers but there was also military and civilian work there so they get a combined five different retirements/ss payments.  (And yes, the SS payments are small - you could eliminate them and the savings/wealth overall wouldn't be much different.)

    Even so, they did a great job of socking away additional money in IRAs/Thrift Savings Plan and even have a couple of small annuities.  No extra real estate, I don't think they ever used a financial planner. 

    But the biggest thing is, they simply never wasted  money.  The took trips (Europe, etc. but never five star hotel) but they were happy with with  black coffee with milk, cooked at home, etc. 

    Ultimately, they followed the Micawber principal from David Copperfield: 

    Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen and six, result happiness.  Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

    But with a twist.  The basically bought what they needed for themselves.  (They gave generously -- maybe too much -- to us kids.)

    I need to knock on wood, because even though they saved well, my dad may have some significant expenses going forward, but they did a great job of saving for being teachers (dad was an enlisted AF man for 20 years).  

    Ultimately, it's a bit sad -- I wish they had maybe splurged on themselves more, but I don't think spending money made them happy.

    Worrying about parents is a big burden that we never think about, but the fact that my parents made it such that we kids don't have to worry about the finances -- that's a big deal I hope that I can pass on to my kids.  It's a challenge, made more so because I often buy what I want, and not what I need.  

    "Happiness is what you have divided by what you want." - Arthur Brooks.

     

    • Hook 'Em 2
×
×
  • Create New...