Vacation (2) - South
And a few pictures from the trip down south with the daughter, sadly a bust, she wore only hotpants, I brought no sweater or pot to cook dinner in ("When I was a kid we never ate when we were camping..." I tell her, she wasn't reassured... "Consider it a Vision Quest..."). And I overestimated, all in all, the amount of prospecting I could do with her along, overall, she bore it, but there were meltdowns and in future I think I'll have to confine my interests to hers, she's amply indulged mine, if the weather clears I can do this on my own...
Twin Forks. Free, empty campground, much abused by the local quadding contingent...
Beautiful sunset...
And a peculiar infestation of iridescent blue beetles, at first thought they were some rare twilight flower, upon closer inspection (see meltdown & hotpants...)
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Targeted Ads
And every once in a while I'm accosted with ads that show how my online existence has been tracked, the "Targeted Ads". Cookies, crumbs, are swept from my browser's history, used to assemble a profile of who I am, what I'm after...ads for gems, (am I to be married? They're misunderstanding my research...), self-publishing (where do they get this?), ads to correct wrinkles and grey hair (hmm. Apparently my tastes are age specific), ads to sell me on Senior women or Russian Mail Order brides, (Ooops), but the best one, he crops up on YouTube, I think it's a targeted ad, but I'm not sure.
Some asshole, in his garage, showing me his new Masarati...no, he's not really about the money, he's got lots, he's really about the books and he's just bought 2000 books for his personal library, he can afford this because...
I've never made it further than this. Time, perhaps, to clear my cookies and start again...
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Nightclubbing
Twisted, Saturday night, daughters on a sleepover and I haven't been out forever, head off to Twisted.
I shouldn't have, really, wasn't in the mood, couldn't seem to get in the mood, too much on my mind, and the amusing inanity soon became boring, trite and overdone. Dancing, by myself, with others, a well dressed young black man, forefinger down, beckoning me over, this forefinger thing, I've just noticed it, everyone, it seems, is demonstrating their inner "Alpha Male" with it, the new gesture of "power and arrogance", he's ornamented his with a thick gold ring, making sure it's seen...it seems innocent enough, until he begins squeezing his nipple at me and covering me in imagined milk, licking his lips, there follow increasingly desperate attempts to gain my attention, dancing, my gaze held off into the middle distance, pretending not to see...
...there's the doorman, vampire white, muscular, shorter, an air of brutal savagery about him, he's never seen the sun and something about him, his piercings and tattoos, shaven head, reads "Serial Killer"...
...there's Superman, a T-shirt with the superman logo, dancing, twerking, dancing with his reflection in the mirrored pillar, arousing himself, clutching his engorging member, undoing his shorts to clutch himself closer, only to reveal his Superman underpants...
...and the latin lover, straight, 40 or 50 something, preying upon the drunken girls, lifting his shirt, placing their hands on him, dancing, bending them over then affixing his lips of incredible suction to theirs, some don't resist, too drunk, their friends laugh, take pictures, this will be facebook hell, the story of the "latin" lover disproven by photos that really should ensure she never, ever drinks again...after the photos the friends pull her from the dance floor, latin lover still attached to her mouth, he's not letting go, holding on with his lips, she can't breathe, the friends grow less amused, gently pulling him, harder and then harder, from his prey, men step in, no uncertain pressure, release her from his clutches, he's oblivious, dancing again, looking for another victim, there are abundant choices here...
I'm not in the mood, perhaps made myself a little too regular here, this is a twice a year place at best, that, or perhaps I need merely to up the dosage...
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There are no half-million dollar houses in Calgary...
There are no half-million dollar houses in Calgary
It's a new thing, new to the past dozen years or so, this half-million dollar average price for an average home in Calgary. And the recent drop in the price of oil and gas has meant that as the workers flee the city these prices are being artificially held in place...
Let me take a moment to assure you, there are no half million dollar houses in Calgary.
You are buying into a fiction. How, a mere 12 years ago, a bungalow worth $160, 000, is now suddenly worth $500,000? There was a sudden bout of insanity that swept the markets, a boom in the oil and gas sector, and prices doubled, and then tripled, almost overnight.
Think about it. What you are buying is/are:
- Low interest rates, and predicting that they hold forever...
- Optimistic economic forecasts that predict the price of oil and gas will endlessly rise...("and how has that worked out for you, may I ask?")
- You are buying into a system that has allowed banks and landlords to speculate and gamble on your ability and willingness to overpay for a shelter that should be a basic human right. You are being sold a home, not on the basis of "what it's worth" but on the basis of "What can you afford to pay?", and not paying for it's value, but rather what your willing to pay for month after month, year after year, for the next 25 or 30 years...
- You're buying an imagined job security, a commitment to a job at a certain rate of pay for the next 25 or 30 years...
- You are enabling landlords to treat your "right" to shelter as a commodity, to buy up properties, speculate, create artificial scarcity and so inflate prices.
- You are paying for every realtors dream, where every minute of every day is the perfect, the best time, to buy or sell your house...Prices will only rise or drop, depending on what your considering...
- You are paying for the infrastructure - water, cable, sewage, electric, road, not only of your own far flung suburb, but suburbs even further out, these costs averaged over the city, you're buying a commitment to pay for these things your entire life, for in your life they will surely break and property taxes will increase.
- You're paying for 3 months half-hearted labor from a part time cowboy builder, a 3 month project dragged into a year of absent construction workers and tradesmen.
- You're buying into a billboard advertising a suburb filled with idiots just like you, the dream of success and carefully rationed coffee's and packed lunches
- You're buying the bank out of poorly managed investments, out of inevitable foreclosures and NINJA loans, out of poorly concealed bailouts and fixed interest rates
- You're buying insurance on a property you will soon come to hope burns down, and when the storms come you will watch the sky and pray with anxious eyes that the tornado strikes you, that the hail flattens this cardboard monstrosity into the field, that your own poor judgement will be mediated, alleviated by the wrath of God...you'll be praying for the end of the world so you can recover some slight measure of what you've paid...
How much do you earn? 3 times what you earned 12 years ago? Lucky you, few people are doing so well. What do you make now? $100K per year, less taxes, say $65K, less car payments, car insurance, house insurance, less property taxes, maintenance, a 30 minute daily commute if you're lucky, 15 minutes to groceries, and while you're praying the price of gas rises so you keep your job every nickel more at the pumps is crushing you, that SUV, everyone has one, but it's hardly fuel efficient, and those twice-a-week fills are starting to hit you a bit hard, and your mortgage alone, with property taxes and insurance, that's half your take home pay...
And this is a country with more land per capita than any other country on earth, barring Australia. And our land, (Sorry OZ), you can grow things on it.
When the Oilpatch EI runs out, that's when things will start to get interesting...
Links: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/will-this-circle-be-unbroken-rising-house-prices-sinking-dreams/article25889749/
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