Bad Business

“Based on the latest figures from Experian, the average new-car loan interest rate for a buyer with excellent credit was 5.18% for the first quarter of this year. But that average jumps to 15.81% for borrowers with a poor credit history.”

It’s a sad feature of our financial system that those with the least ability to afford something are often forced the pay the most for that very thing. The further up the food chain the less they often pay for food, chains, cars, whatever. They would argue that those with bad credit, with less ability to pay, are more likely to default, which I would assume is true. But let’s say you have an insanely large percentage of defaults – like, 30%, well, then 70% of those same people stuck it out, despite it all, giving you more money than you deserve, maybe?

Of course, they are not in business to be nice, but to make as much money as they possibly can and unfortunately, that is mostly made off those with less money and little power. Rich people have more power, more choices, more everything, and they cannot possibly purchase – even with their fancy yachts and mansions – enough to rival the giant middle to lower classes. So, they developed a system that makes the most money off the giant middle to lower classes.

That’s also why they charge $30 late fees; can you imagine what it actually cost that lender to get a late payment? It’s almost too small to imagine. Now imagine selling something that happens automatically with no human intervention for $30 – constantly – over and over and over, day after day, seven days a week. The late fees department must have one impressive profitability.

But of course, that is not the only way to run your business. You can make money and be good, too. There are lots of good businesses out there making good money by being good, caring about their customers, never overcharging, yet being paid well for what they do. But none of the giant companies – the huge multinational banks and the like – are good. You have to wonder if a business gets to a certain size does it automatically get kind of sick in the head? Does huge always ultimately lead to heartless? And short-sighted modern-day investors don’t help either.

What would that look like? A VISA or Chase Manhattan or USBank that ran a much tighter ship, like their grandpa would have? Make good money, but god dammit, be good! Could that exist in the jungle of the financial sector? When I was young, credit card rates were often 5.99%, 7.99%; I remember when I saw 9.99% for the first time and thought it was the apocalypse. And it does beg the question, why have the average credit card rates gone up across the board so much? To what do they attribute that? Have we all gotten so bad that we must be charged more? And even during COVID when they were borrowing at zero percent, their rates never came down. It should be noted that they borrow at like one or two percent now. And now the only people who could get a rate like those these days are, again, those who don’t need it.

That’s the system. And most people are perfectly fine with it. The wealthy are, of course, and those with less are too busy getting by to think much about it.

Another letter never published

I like to write letters to the editor and here’s one (of many) they ignored.

The column inches dedicated to the cost of eggs over the last year has been absolutely ludicrous. Eggs are expensive because there is a shortage of eggs because we humans had to kill millions and millions of egg-laying chickens due to the bird flu. A shortage of something leads to an increase in price. Even our dear leader* can’t do anything about it, short of firing all the people tasked with killing the chickens or possibly adding bleach to their feeding tubes to treat the flu.

Mary, mother of truth

Mary M. Coady nailed it in her letter to the Minnesota Star Tribune today:

We seem to make up words to not use the word lie. Just to be clear, fake news is a lie. Misinformation is a lie. Alternative facts are a lie. Revisionism is a lie. We teach our children to tell the truth and anything else is a lie. Or remember the word fib? I wish the media wouldn’t shy away from saying something is a lie. When someone says that Ukraine started the war, the media should emphatically state that is a lie and that Russia started the war in 2022!

From your lips to God’s ears, Ms. Coady. And so should we. She’s absolutely right. Call it. Every time. Anytime you hear yet another lie from the republicans in any context, say it out loud, “That is a lie.” Like a religious mantra. “That is a lie.”

How about we just go ahead and start a religion: Truthism. But with one moral: Tell the truth.* One Psalm: Lying hurts. One holiday: Every day is truth day. One hymnal: Any song with “the truth will set you free” in it.

So someone says something, in front of you, or on the television, or in something you’re reading, and you know it to be untrue, say it out loud, “That is a lie.” And be ready with your sources and that is all you say, like a captured soldier who will give only name, rank and serial number, “I will email or text my sources.” Like Spock.

Let’s just stop putting up with it. It’s a lie. It’s a lie! It’s a god-damned lie! No. “That is a lie.” “That is a lie.” “That is a lie.”

Our sacred sound and invocation. Our own om.

Stop the money. Save the nation.

I do this every once in a while where I write something after some immersion in the bad news of the day. Note that the current bad news is worse than it’s ever been in my lifetime. But I start pontificating on the evil, greed, hate and blah, blah, blah. This time I’m quite a bit more freaked out but when I got done and reread it, I was struck by how silly it all is. Bestowing upon the world my opinions on whatever. Here’s what we need to do! Whatever. But it’s cathartic and so ultimately it’s worth it, right? And I kind of like this one. Here goes:

Everybody right now open an account on Bluesky. Good Americans can talk there.

Completely shut down all of your other social media accounts – X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc. All of them. We’ll do this fast and we’ll do this right and you can get your accounts back. Grab your data, or start fresh. Do it now.

Do not buy anything from any of those companies – purchase nothing on Amazon, close those accounts also, do not buy a Tesla, if you have one, enjoy it and drive it into the ground. Do not use Elon Musk’s satellite connections, nor any of his other companies, and those of you who do the science as astronomers and engineers and the like working for him, you’re smart! Get the fuck out of there! Anybody working for any of those companies, walk now.

Disrupt the activity of everything related to those same businesses. This of course includes Trump companies. Whatever you can do. Good hackers, this especially means you. Blow our minds.

Yes, this will create hardship, but if we do this fast and we do this right, we’ll get through it easily and the old-fashioned way, taking care of one another, looking after our neighbors. We’re the good Americans, remember? We can take a little hardship. In fact, we can take a lot of hardship to save the nation – and ourselves, our families, our loved ones, our friends and coworkers and neighbors.

If we do this fast and we do this right, we can avoid violence of any kind. That being said, everyone be prepared to the best of your abilities.

The only two things they understand are money and power, and they will stop at nothing to use their power to bring us to our knees and take all the money for themselves. They are doing it right now. Right in front of our eyes. We must immediately stop the flow of any money into their businesses.

Please pass this on to everyone you know.

Yesterday and Today

[Yesterday]

I’m sick. And I’m sad. And I think I’m losing my mind. Nothing’s falling into place like it tends to. In fact, things seem to be falling upward and out of my control. But I’m sick – sore throat, fever, sleepy as hell, so the falling upward is a good description to my feverish mind. It truly feels like life is being sucked up around me into some slo-mo tornado so I can reach up to try to, but grab nothing. It’s out of reach. It’s out of control. It’s nightmarish.

It’s the emotions
that swirl like air
whirling the debris
of life
of which
I’ve lost control.

***

[Today: So my therapist tells me to journal when I’m at a point like I was yesterday and I got this far in my writing when my phone rang and it was a good friend who just called to see how I was doing. I was able to articulate my frustrations and fears about life, love, work, money and the state of the nation. He talked me back from the ledge and we were soon laughing. He was just doing what friends do and didn’t have any idea how incredibly well-timed, important and helpful it was to me. Keep your friends close. And don’t be afraid to reach out to them before you get to this point – something I need to get much better at.]

Tests of what?

An obituary appeared in the newspaper a few days ago for Reg Murphy, who was a newspaper editor at The Atlanta Constitution, among other jobs and publications. He passed away recently at the age of 90. What interested me was a story about him that happened in 1974, which is why I don’t remember it at all. (I was ten.) So one day, while at the paper Mr. Murphy was contacted by a man “identified as William A.H. Williams, a drywall subcontractor.” Mr. Williams reached out to Mr. Murphy ostensibly about 300,000 gallons of heating oil he wanted to donate “to a worthy cause.”

It was all rather odd and he wanted Mr. Murphy to go to his lawyer’s office to sign some papers, but as Mr. Murphy said, he went along because it was important and usual “for newspapermen to have to lead open lives and be available to anonymous or strange people.” Strange indeed. Once Mr. Murphy was in the car, Mr. Williams brandished a gun and said, “Mr. Murphy, you have been kidnapped.” Why? It’s going to sound very familiar. First, he said he was a “‘colonel in the American Revolutionary Army’ and ranted against the ‘lying, leftist, liberal news media’ and ‘Jews in the government.'” Murphy by the way was a moderate in politically.

But what the hell? It’s the same shit people are slinging right now. This was 50 years ago! When are we going to grow up? Lump all Jews into a single stereotype and bitch about the so-called liberal media? Great. I think it’s time we put away this way of thinking and acting.

What? They won? Oh. The dog caught the car. This is going to get interesting. However, …

Jews, immigrants, people of color, gay people, sick people, artists, disabled people, poor people, incarcerated people, and decent, liberal white folks, do you understand that the federal government, beginning in January, is actually openly gunning for you? For who you are, what you stand for, how you love, where you worship or come from?

I hope so. Because without you viscerally experiencing the very real fear, danger and anger you should be experiencing right now, and doing something about it, we’re screwed as a nation; and as individuals who do not, for whatever arbitrary reason, live up to the very real and very bizarre physical, mental, emotional, sexual, political, religious and whatever else set of creepy-ass tests of character or personhood or deserving of being treated nicely, or whatever the fuck they make up and use to judge everyone else.

Sit on your hands on the buses of life, blushing at all the apple stealers. That’s a paraphrase, I think, of Davie Bowie. This is not: And then one day, the apple stealers show up with guns.

“Sushi. Roti. Reibekuchen”

I’m trying to get my head around how to write about ambient music. I share albums occasionally but struggle mightily to describe any of it. I believe it’s because how I interact with ambient music doesn’t lend itself to adjectives. As might be expected, my relationship with ambient music is rather um ambient; right? There are no verses and choruses being sung at me that I listen to, engage and maybe sing along with. Ambient music exists around me and I tune in and out, mostly unconsciously, I suppose. I don’t listen to parts or instruments, but the entirety of the soundscape, like a landscape. Using that metaphor, most other music is like engaging in the world with people and about specific things; ambient music is more like a walk alone in a forest. They talk about nature bathing, ambient’s like music bathing. See? How do you write about that?

So I think I have to simply put the album up and say, have at it if you’re into this sort of thing.

So check this out. Brian Eno must never sleep. This came out of nowhere* – an awesome collaborative album with Eno, Holger Czukay and J Peter Schwalm. “Sushi. Roti. Reibekuchen” Have at it.

*I should be clear that this came out of nowhere for me isn’t probably all that newsworthy. It’s not like I’m checking in with Eno to see what’s coming.

Think Like This

I noticed I am suddenly offered a pink heart along with the red heart in the initial emoji showing for texts. I’ll bet they’re trying to make us better distinguish between love and LOVE! You know? Temper us; make us less over the top with either love or hate; make us get along better. They can do that, you know. And they do. It’s crazy.

Reason number 454 to get your ass off “X”.

I Remember

I remember skitching cars in wintertime when I was a kid. We’d have a day with a deep, fresh, icy snow pack, and we’d crouch between two parked cars (near a stop sign) and when a car drove up and stopped (and there was not a car coming behind them), we’d crawl out, grab the bumper and slide along down the street. It was really stupid* and that we were. You’d think the first face full of 70s car exhaust would have dampened our spirits.** I lost an expensive ski glove that way, too, which might be kind of ironic. Or maybe not.

I wrote a drunk song called skitching in the snow many years ago. It’s bad but maybe funny.

*Don’t do it. Dangerous. And dumb, too.

**Or did it ginger up our spirits like only huffing gas can do?*

continuums/continuui?

Dichotomies. Black and white. One or the other. Except of course for the gray areas where everything we consider “black” or “white” actually resides. There’s no true black (completely and absolutely black) and no true white (completely and absolutely white), but a continuum of black to white and back again. But that’s confusing, right? So we’ll just talk black and white.

Nope. Introvert/Extrovert, Asshole/Saint, Liberal/Conservative. Two “opposing” sides of anything are in fact the two ends of a continuum. They touch each other like the two sides of a coin. That’s why questions at the doctor have like eleven choices: agree, somewhat agree, just sort of agree, thinkin’ about agreeing, meh, I’m intrigued…

Atheism/Religion. Even those who’d scream “There is a god!” or “There is no such thing as a god!” right into your face, spittle and all; within each of them, at the very least, there exists a seed that if watered properly through whatever experience or experiences will grow and lead them to think somehow otherwise. We all have the ability to learn, to change; and we can’t help but evolve.

Enemy/Friend. From frenemies to mortal enemies; from ghosting someone to killing them. But even mortal enemies would come together if it were truly needed of them – like if two mortal enemies (I don’t know about you but I’m picturing medieval chainmail mortal enemies) had to jump into a lake to save an old woman in a sinking Oldsmobile. They’d do it! Although chainmail and ponds make for a dangerous combination.

Bad thoughts/Good thoughts. Maybe it’s like a bell curve continuum, so there’s a long, sort-of plateau in the middle, the middle ground, where our thoughts go from bad to good, but the closer you get to one or the other the faster you fall into it. Or maybe not.

Remember the continuum. No one is all good. No one is all bad.