OK, I admit it. It’s late in the day and my brain is totally fried from writing code. Also, it’s single digits outside, so no way in heck am I going for a walk to clear my head. Also, it’s probably a lot warmer “in heck,” but I digress. Here is the caption contest offering from the current NYer. C’mon all you crossword-sleuths out there. I bet there’s a caption sitting right on the tip of your tongue. Assuming, that is, that your brain is not fried like mine – from coding, or whatever it is you do all day. And also that it’s somewhere north of single digits wherever you are. Assuming that’s not “in heck.”
Brother can you spare a dime? Or at least an idea? Please?
The NYer cartoon caption contest is here. Or, you can leave your caption in the comments and I’ll see it gets where it needs to be. Oh, and just so you know, entries must be received by 11:59 P.M. E.T. on February 5, 2023.
A Colorado radio station polled listeners on what things they consider deal-breakers in a relationship.
My favorite?
Yep, that would definitely do it for me too.
Followed closely by…
Okay then, moving on.
Last but not least.
Truth to tell, we got the TP thing sorted out about 40 years ago, less than halfway through the first roll. There are some issues you just don’t compromise on – all’s I’m sayin’…
For those of you living a fast-paced life – and whose plants have a tendency to shrivel up and die midwinter – there’s hope. It’s all in how you see it. To wit:
Actually we have one plant – a succulent from IKEA in West Sac – that seems almost impossible to kill. I call it “Shrek’s ears,” for obvious reason. But I have no idea of it’s real name. Anybody? There’s a valuable prize in store for anyone who comes up with the real name.
The mystery succulent.
Last but not least, and no thanks to me, my wife has quite the green thumb, even here in the bleak mid-winter. FYI, more snow is on the way, with wind chills tomorrow in the -15 to -20 degree range. Brrrrrr!
Back during college I roomed with a guy who carried around a glass ashtray in his briefcase. He did this so that, no matter where he ended up studying, he could always chain smoke unfiltered Camels. We were a study in contrasts, we two. For instance, I only smoked unfiltered Camels during the single week I was finishing up my undergrad honors thesis. He was a business major, while I was a psych major. I prided myself on not ever taking a single business class.
Before graduation he got kicked out of the residence hall. This happened because of an incident where he climbed though a trap door in the roof of a dorm elevator and hijacked it with unsuspecting passengers aboard. By contrast, I actually became a dorm residence hall assistant my last year. After graduation, he joined a small insurance company in the Midwest that eventually was bought out by Citibank. This allowed him to retire early. I on the other hand went on to med school, and… well, you know: Another story for another day. Suffice it to say, it’s not how you start out, but how you finish. Oh, and also, I’m still working. So there’s that.
I thought of him this week as I was reading a humor piece in the New Yorker, titled “The Secret to Wealth Is Giving Up Pointless Expenses (and Other Lessons from My Twenty-Eight-Dollar Book).” To my knowledge he hasn’t written a book yet, but he does now spend his days fishing on a lake. And I remember him once railing about his daughters using Kleenex to blow their noses when they could have saved a ton of money by using toilet paper instead, so maybe there’s something to it after all? You make the call. But in any case… don’t take the elevator. (If you read to the end, you’ll see why.)
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More Americans than ever are struggling to make ends meet. Is this because wages have remained stagnant while expenses creep up? Could it be that health care costs more, while insurance covers less? Predatory lenders? Skyrocketing tuition? Unregulated capitalism and unfettered corporate greed?
No. The problem is financial literacy. Too many young people are making idiotic short-term financial decisions that hamper long-term success. That’s why it’s so important that they break that habit by purchasing my book “How to Stop Making Idiotic Short-Term Financial Decisions That Hamper Long-Term Success” (M.S.R.P. $27.99).
Here are a handful of the lessons that I share in my guide to guaranteed green:
Stop buying coffee and start saving for a house.
A grande latte at Starbucks — which is absolutely an item that young people still purchase and the place at which they purchase it — costs $3.65. Meanwhile, the median price of a home in the United States is around four hundred thousand dollars. That means that if you just skipped one coffee per day, you could save up enough cash to buy your dream house in just over three hundred years. (Although, by that time, the median home price will probably be closer to one or two quadrillion dollars — so you might want to skip two coffees a day.)
Cut costs around the home.
Let’s say you’re ahead of the curve and already have a place to live. The skimping has only just begun. The average American spends more than a hundred dollars on electricity every month. And, as someone with an M.F.A. in economics, I can tell you with a reasonable amount of confidence: That’s twelve hundred dollars a year. But imagine how much you could save if you simply didn’t turn on the light during your middle-of-the-night bathroom visits. How much earlier you’d retire if you just stopped opening your refrigerator. How many more vacations you’d take if you charged your iPad using your next-door neighbor’s potato battery, which won second place at the Johnston Middle School Science Fair. Sure, a life without electricity might make you feel like a caveman. But when was the last time you heard about a caveman having to take out a second mortgage?
Ditch the credit card.
Too many young people get lured into debt because they think they can spend money that they don’t have. That’s why, since the publication of my first book, “The Millionaire Mind-Set: How You Can Become Rich Through a Lifetime of Severe Frugality (Although That’s Not How I Did It),” I’ve recommended that anyone who wants a stable financial future should stay the heck away from credit cards. I’ve taken some criticism throughout the years from naysayers who contend that the only way for a cash-poor person to secure an apartment is to have a good credit score. To those people, I say, “What are you doing being cash poor in the first place?” That reminds me of another lesson . . .
Don’t Be Cash Poor.
The No. 1 prerequisite to being rich is having money. People forget this! I would actually recommend getting as much money as you can.
Start investing for retirement now.
Commit the following to memory: You should be saving at least twenty per cent of your income for retirement. You should also put twenty-five per cent of your income into an emergency fund, thirty per cent into the stock market, eighteen per cent into a college fund for your children, and five per cent toward financial self-help books. It may seem like that doesn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room for other expenses. But don’t worry. If you’re like me, you won’t even notice those missing six million dollars.
Go to trade school.
The university system is a total scam — sucking up so much of your capital without making you any smarter. In fact, I find that readers who don’t have a college education enjoy my books a lot more than those who do. So, instead of getting a useless degree (say, an M.F.A. in economics), why not learn how to operate a drill or inspect a building or whatever people in the trades do? We’ve spent all this time convincing generations of children that the only way to succeed is to go to college. But one size doesn’t fit all. So that’s why I tell everyone I meet, no matter the circumstances, to go to trade school.
Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Ask any of my doctors about the secret to weight loss, and they’ll tell you that a great first step is simply to take the stairs. Well, I’m here to tell you the same goes for becoming rich. Not only is avoiding elevators scientifically proven to make you healthy, saving you costly visits to the doctor, but scaling your office’s thirty-six stories every day will teach you to withstand incredible amounts of prolonged discomfort. And that’s a crucial skill for any penny-pincher.
Last but not least: Time is money.
I’d know. I have a lot of both.
Bonus Photos From U. Chicago, 1980.
Rockefeller Chapel @ U of C.Disclaimer: NOT the same roommate, but a roommate nevertheless.View from the tenth floor of The Shoreland, a residence hall with an ill-fated elevator.Researcher and subject: Rattus norvegicus and me. But who is studying whom?
Today’s Word Of The Day here in the bleak midwinter comes from the PA Dutch dictionary – and my mother – who always admonished me when I was being too hasty, careless, or sloppy (or in her words, too “schusslic”). I think maybe it’s derived from the root of the verb “schussle,” which is defined as:
I leave it to better German speakers than me to determine whether her schusslic derivation is legit, or whether it’s just the exasperated neologism of weary parents everywhere, at least in the bleak midwinter.
At least one of our kids – now in his 30’s – was fortunate enough to attend Roseville Community Preschool in Southern California when it was run by the legendary Bev Bos. After we moved – first to Northern California, then to Colorado Springs – we were fortunate enough to add two more kids and to find a worthy successor for early childhood education in the Ruth Washburn Cooperative Nursery School (RWCNS). Now you may or may not have kids of your own. You may or may not care about education, in early childhood or otherwise. And you may or may not have heard of either Bev Bos or RWCNS. But any way you slice it, there is one thing you must always remember: Don’t Move The Muffin Tins. That was the title of Bev Bos’ landmark 1978 book, subtitled: “A Hands-Off Guide to Art for the Young Child.”
Don’t Move The Muffin Tins, 1978.
I’ll leave it to you to figure out WHY you shouldn’t move the muffin tins. Suffice it to say, though, that the proof is in the pudding. And if you were to ask any of our three kids today about their early childhood education experience at Roseville and/or RWCNS, I’m pretty sure all of them would tell you that they got off on the right foot educationally speaking.
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Who cares? Well, apparently not Columbia University. They have their own version of progressive early childhood education, called The Red Balloon, and they’re letting it fold. The story from the current issue of the New Yorker is here. In a word: An institution of higher learning with a thirteen-billion-dollar endowment has decided to discontinue serving twenty-five preschoolers from Harlem. Or, as the NYer article succinctly puts it:
Why would Columbia allow itself to be seen as the ogre crushing a bunch of little kids and their caregivers under its foot? It may be that, in the decades since the university’s president manifested better child care on campus partly out of a sense of pure chagrin, Columbia has fully metabolized its identity as a giant real-estate-holding company, one with a crucial sideline in educational services that exempts it from paying property taxes.
My guess is that without significant external pressure, Columbia will do whatever it wants. My hope is that they will see this for the public relations disaster that it certainly is, and reconsider. Only time will tell. And in the meantime, under any and all circumstances: Don’t. Move. The. Muffin. Tins.
There are some places it’s best to stay away from. For me, Old Santa Fe Pottery is one of those places. From salsa to salamanders and sculptures to ceramics, I find it hard to resist. Just a small sampling of kitsch galore….
Old Santa Fe Pottery – see here. 2485 S. Santa Fe Dr., Denver, CO.
It’s a sad day for fashion. Supermodel Tatjana Patitz (56) has died of metastatic breast cancer. Coming of age with a host of other fashionistas in the 90’s, she was one of the quietest, fiercest, and most mysterious. Famous for her work with photographer Peter Lindbergh – see “White Shirts: Six Supermodel(s), Malibu” – the German-born Patitz started out as a competitive rider and made her home on a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley near Solvang, CA. I think maybe that’s why I love her cowboy shots the best, though for cheeky activism the PETA ad’s gotta be a close second. Extra credit if you can identify her in each of the group shots below alongside her more easily recognizable peers, including the iconic Vogue 100th Anniversary Special.
NY Times obit is here. Spread from the Guardian is here.
Alright, I admit it: I’m flabbergasted. Speechless. Gobsmacked.
What has me in such a tizzy, you ask? Alright, I’ll tell you.
Unknown singer-songwriters with Universal Music Group Chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge.
First off, let me say that I got the annual communique from the Chief along with everybody else. But I didn’t notice the bombshell hidden within. The full-bore story from Variety is here. In it, Sir Lucian Grainge, CEO of UMG (pictured above on right) says “We need a new model for the streaming economy.”
Already I see the furrows forming on your brow. “I didn’t even know what the OLD model of the streaming economy was, let alone what should replace it,” I hear you saying. Well brother that makes two of us. Here is what the Variety writer describes as the crux of the issue:
He is addressing in no uncertain terms the model by which creators are paid in streaming, whereby a service places all of the music streams into one big pile and pays creators based on their percentage of that pile. Which is why streaming pays millions to top creators like Taylor Swift and Drake and much less to non-superstars. It is also a major reason why songwriters are getting the short end of the stick in the streaming economy: Publishers are paid on average 25% of streaming revenue while recorded music receives 75%. And considering the large number of songwriters credited on hit songs these days, that’s a very small slice of the pie for the people who actually create the songs.
Still mystified? Well, #MeToo, Bubba.
Sir Lucian goes on to explain:
Let me explain. In order to entice consumers to subscribe, platforms naturally exploit the music of those artists who have large and passionate fan bases. But then, once those fans have subscribed, consumers are often guided by algorithms to generic music that lacks a meaningful artistic context, is less expensive for the platform to license or, in some cases, has been commissioned directly by the platform. For example, just witness the thousands and thousands of 31-second track uploads of sound files whose sole purpose is to game the system and divert royalties.
The result? A less fulfilling experience for the consumer, diminished compensation flowing to artists that are driving the business models of the platforms, and fewer cultural moments that fans can collectively share. All of that undermines the creativity and development of artists and their music that the platforms were, in part, designed to foster.
And here you thought global warming, the demise of cryptocurrency, and all those classified documents hiding in Biden’s garage were the only things you had to worry about? Au contraire, mon frere. Gobsmacked? You better be.
So, lowly songwriters take heart. And take THAT, Drake. Also, en guarde, Taylor Swift. There’s a new sheriff in town and his name’s Sir Lucian. <If anybody can figure out what the hell he’s talking about, that is. Can you? If so, I’m dying to hear about it. Leave us a comment. Please, I’m begging you here.>
