Radioshack Post-Mortem

It was the most magical part of my childhood. I was constantly buying parts and equipment there from the time I was 6 years old until almost up to the day I emigrated out of America.

The only thing that made me happier than buying stuff at RadioShack was buying books.

That was a different America with a vastly different future than the one you see now. It was a country full of engineers building things and Americans included children from a young age in the cycle of learning by doing. RadioShack was all about selling them the tools they needed to get stuck into the thick of it long before they graduated high school.

I loved crystal radios so much I built dozens of them, including ones that worked off a razor blade and a piece of pencil lead in place of the diode. It was a blast and I listened every single night after I was supposed to be in bed. It felt like I was connected to a much larger world after sundown with my eyes closed in the darkness of my room. I would walk through signals on shortwave from all over the planet until CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATRE came on. It was absolute magic. I enjoyed those radio shows more than anything I ever saw on television or at the movies.

Every time I bought a handful of parts I would leave it up in the air what to build with them. It might be a rain detector or a burglar alarm, a radio controlled robot that could turn left or right, a candy dispenser or a Simon matching game with LEDs. I can remember how much patience I learned when it didn't necessarily work correctly the first time. I would painstakingly review the circuit diagram I had used until I uncovered my error. When you hit the power after finding and fixing that bug there is a surge of reward in your veins when it begins functioning.

I didn't know as a child that the declining value of the dollar, runaway inflation and going off the gold standard was draining the country dry. I didn't know that when I grew up, America would no longer be a meritocracy or a society that rewarded discipline and mastery of these subjects. All the industries were being forced overseas and the tax system was killing the middle class. By the time I was full grown the rot and decay had been endemic a long, long time. Kids like me were an amusing novelty. Kids who could think and solve problems, fix stuff and make things better were rapidly becoming less desirable than criminals, thieves and embezzlers. They had slowly been made obsolete. Virtuous people in general, people with self-control, were increasingly viewed as troublemaking nerds and weirdos who could not be counted upon to do what was expected. Integrity and quality was on its way out. The dollar was hollow and false, pretend money for a pretend country.

I remember getting to my first duty assignment in the Army over in Germany and having trouble understanding how the soldiers and non-commissioned officers could openly deal and use drugs right in plain sight, the hard stuff, without anyone arresting them. It seemed like a topsy-turvy world where right was wrong, wrong was right and sanity was considered a character defect. I also began to realise shortly after going into the military that these people were the norm now and I was the defective cog in the machine. The U.S. Army is the pulse of the latest generation and I could see at once that these other kids had childhoods that were nothing like my own. Most of them were methamphetamine-fueled vulgar and destructive people who cursed God as naturally as yawning.

Rap Died A Decade Ago

Unlike Disco, music labels continued to produce, sell it and force it into a variety of venues for ten years after it ceased to be commercially profitable.

The next time somebody tells you market forces determine what entertainment looks like, ask them why Hollywood is making movies nobody sees and music nobody listens to despite years of feedback that the dog simply won't eat that dogfood. Without their powerful distribution cartel (junk is poured into cable whether they want it or not, despite nobody watching it on there either except as background noise) the entertainment industry would have gone broke a long, long time ago.

Their political motives are strong enough for them to sustain millions and millions of dollars in losses in favour of what they'd like people to see, not what they actually want to see.

They play that rap crap at the gym and this is another reason I always take my MP3 player to drown that garbage out. It is difficult to imagine anything duller and more uncool than rap music. Sales were always driven by ten year old white kids who had only one parent in the household but even they stopped purchasing around the turn of the century.

The dog doesn't like that dogfood. Period. I am not sure it ever really did.

If there is one thing that doesn't drive the entertainment industry, it is market forces. They are driven largely by political and social cartels that impose ideas on people they really do not find attractive at all. They keep cramming for years on end hoping they will make the beast so sick and numb it just doesn't care anymore.

They knew they didn't have to keep it up forever. They just had to keep it up long enough to finish the job. And get properly supplied and equipped to cope with dogs when they decided they have had enough.

How Much Do Humans Know About The Ocean?

Like every other subject - about 1% of what they pretend to know.

We know more about the surface of the moon than we do the deepest parts of the ocean.

Previously unknown creatures are discovered in the ocean every day and we should not be surprised if they ever announce they have found Leviathan just as scripture described him.

What Do You Call America With No Middle Class?

Botswana North.

Better street wiring, copper plumbing. Lots of stuff that will be ripped out and sold in a fraction of the time it took to build and install, in fact.

Just throw open the gates and leave the keys on the front porch. The country is finished.

Homo Sapiens Soundly Beaten By Chimpanzees In Cognitive Tests

Always thought it was suspicious with you carrying those domesticated animals and plants around, Saps. You never did look like you were responsible for those things.

Can you provide us with an explanation of where you were between 45,000 B.C. and 38,000 B.C around the time the Neanderthals were all crowded into an Alamo on the Iberian Peninsula and genocided then cannibalized? It will look better if you cooperate with the investigation. Tell us everything you know. If you don't know anything, that right there is telling us something about you.

Nietzsche Appreciation Banned

Greatest thinker of the 19th century, without hesitation.

Goethe, Schopenhauer, Spinoza to follow no doubt.

Since they are getting rid of electric light bulbs and hot running water, might as well ban Thomas Edison and any home repair books while you are at it.

Hastings Wrote About Bergdahl, Then He Was Killed

One year ago, Michael Hastings took an unusual interest in investigating Bergdahl as the last American P.O.W. in Afghanistan.

Immediately after the article was published, he freaked out of his mind saying the U.S. government was going to kill him because of what he had accidentally stumbled across when investigating Bergdahl's captivity. Hastings said they were going to make it look like an accident.

Immediately after which (4 hours) he died in an "accident."

This Bergdahl thing is many wheels within many other wheels turning inside a big wheel.

Time Magazine Is A Melonhead Propaganda Rag

Melonheads are good, crushing the underclass is good, getting rid of the middle class is good, getting rid of the U.S. Constitution and framework of government is good. Poverty, misery, instability and chaos are all good.

I can't believe somebody would be bold enough to actually publish this plutocratic drivel.

Remember, I don't write this crap. I just link to it.

The Founding Fathers would tell us that we should have been knee deep in spent shell casings from the all-night firing squad twenty years ago. We weren't and this is the natural progression.

The tenth generation is always the last. Every 200 years like clockwork. You could set your watch.

Enrichmentation and Improvamentation Together At Last

The Kwanstain is enrichmentated on so many levels, it is hard to know where to begin.

They are really getting liberated now from stuffy old notions of acceptable behaviour those dowdy dotards who formerly lived there were always promoting. Soon they will be liberated from a civilisation. Then the real improvamentation can begin.

Enrichmentation proves that enrichmentation works. Smashed the windows of his truck and left him a note. Like North Korea but with better street wiring. Oh, Officer, I shot your mom the other day because she smelled like dope. Turned out it was just potpourri but you can never be too sure.

Get used to your private property being seized and destroyed because once you get acclimated, next they will be coming for the most precious thing you own. Peds have a never ending need for new faces and they know how to keep the supply chain running smoothly.