I mentioned on my other blog that I've been checking out books on getting rich.

Michael Masterson seems to have the most practical advice in his books Confessions of a Self-Made Millionaire, which is a compilation of articles from his Early To Rise Newsletter (only available through them, apparently, but you can read about it here), and Automatic Wealth: The 6 Steps to Financial Indpendence. There's an article using the latter as a take off point by Hal Cranmer at LewRockwell.com. Here's the first paragraph:

This is not a book review. Michael Masterson's new book, Automatic Wealth: The Six Steps to Financial Independence inspired me to write an article because it illustrates the tremendous potential and performance of the free market economy. With a title such as Automatic Wealth, one would expect the book to describe how to swell your bank account, and it does not disappoint. Mr. Masterson's techniques for becoming financially independent seem very sound to me (who is not, currently, financially independent) and I am already starting to follow his advice. Yet the highlight of the book for me was the non-monetary aspects of wealth. He shows how wealth can take many forms, and it is up to the individual to achieve his own brand of wealth.

I'm also still reading Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (sign up there for a free ebook copy--don't worry, they're not evil spammers) and Wallace Wattles' The Science of Growing Rich (same deal). Science was a more elastic term a hundred years ago, but beyond that both books provide good inspiration for creating a plan and sticking to it. But Masterson puts the most meat on the bones of the plan. And shows that you don't have to have your mind, soul and/or spirit perfectly aligned to achieve financial independence.

I've profited in my intellectual, spiritual* and otherwise personal development from reading all three writers. Hopefully soon we'll start seeing some additions to the bottom line.

*I couldn't stop thinking of Omni as I was reading Wattles. He dwells intensively on the spiritual side of wealth creation.

I'm such a nerd!

I love these damn quizzes:

I am 33% Hippie.

I need to step away from the tie-dye. I smell too good to be a hippie and my dad is probably a cop. Being a hippie is not a fashion craze, man. It was a way of life, in the 60’s, man.

Take the
Hippie Test
@ FualiDotCom

Ayn Rand called Libertarians "Hippies of the Right." It'd be nice if old hippies would eschew the initiation of violence - including destruction of property - to the extent that Libertarians do.

Well, cripes! It's about time I said something over here, eh?

Since the great Anti-Steve Confab 2005 in Danbury, perhaps I should mention where other rendezvouse will be this year. (Thus notifying the local criminal element when they can feel free to loot our home. I'll just catalog the available pillage in a footnote.) Let's see:

Danbury's done. I think that was the only 'shooting event' we'd registered for.

The White Oak Rendezvous in Deer River, MN - 10 miles west of Grand Rapids - is in two weeks.

Grand Portage, which promises to be a much cooler event - it's up by the Canadian Border on Lake Superior (my favorite event, so far) - is one week after that.

And in September is Pine City's Fall Gathering. That one is actually about the same distance from Baraboo and Janesville as Forts Folle Avoine. It's even closer to most parts of Iowa.

If any of the Burri family show up in Voyageur gear (which is all the entry fee they require - $8.00 otherwise, though "Flatlanders" don't get to compete) to challenge me in the stone-throw, I'll have to unleash my full shot-putting form. I've seen that physique now. You'll get no mercy from me.

Jureks need to take notice as well. I don't know how those boys got so darned big. Their parents are tiny. I don't mind their girls winning all the skill contests, 'cause their all so darned cute, but what's up with all these super-jock guys springing from their...uh, progeny?

And for Portage, I need to start working on my fire-starting skills. And gunk-drinking. ...And bearded-gal-kissing. (The latter, I can work on in the mirror.)

I've made it a rule to make one out of c. 3.5 posts over here.

So here I am, trying to think "nouveau riche" thoughts...scratching my belly (mosquito bite)... that sort of thing.

I notice somebody did a special search for a particular picture of my daughter. I'll have a couple of pictures for you, when I get new batteries for my camera. You might want to explain yourself, but don't do it in person. If I see you, I'll... Well, the authorities would take a dim view of it.

My physique is on display on the web. I ran two and a half miles this morning. The picture will be of me curling my 60 pound dumbells.

Oh, and I joined the Gunowners of America because I think the NRA are wimps.

Fair Market Value

That's the price that money-grubbing, envy-consumed, A-hole of a neighbor can be bought for. That wasn't his dream home after all. He wasn't born and raised there. It's just a flop-house. An investment. A starter home.

I just wanna fix this up enough to make a down payment on someplace decent.

Can a Bourgeois Philistine blame a guy for such a motivation? Hell no! But I've already mentioned two other motives for buying a house. I think it's rather strange that the "liberal" members of the US Supreme Court - the defenders of the "little guy" - refuse to take non-monetary considerations - passions! - into consideration.

Let me, right here, right now, coin the term "micro-culture" in defense of little urban neighborhoods that are destroyed by local governments in the name of progress. Every neighborhood has its own culture...its own traditions...the older the neighborhood, the better developed are its traditions.

If all cultures and traditions are to be respected by Multiculturalists... What the hell are they asking for?! That they be preserved in museum?! A zoo?!

"Micro-culture" is a palm leaf I'm offering. A compromise... I'm willing to accept the standards of the community, radical individualist that I am. In my college Cultural Anthropology class, the professor said that it's almost impossible to know more than 125 people on a personal basis. How many Cultural Anthropologists vote Republican or Libertarian?

"It takes a village to raise a child." How many villages contain 1500 people, let alone 10, 100, 1,000 or 10,000 times that? A village is a small community whose members all know each other. They love each other. Or, at least, they respect each other well enough not to steal or destroy each others' property.

If your neighbor cares about something, do you smash it? Do you expect them to love it when you build a beautiful monument (to something else) in its place? If you do, you don't care about your neighbor at all; their life or death is no concern of yours. Their dreams and ambitions and passions are as nothing to you!

You don't care about the little dreams of the little guy.

How can you call yourself a Liberal?

Hey, Omni!

Guys pursue women by proving they can bring home the bacon (literally). Most of the moves required for that don't translate to the stripper pole. The Elmer Fudd costume should never be peeled in public.

I had no idea Mark Cuban was blogging.

Excellently written too. (Think he has an editor?)

If you want to know what a billionaire thinks about, check it out. Especially the April posts. I don't download music and I don't watch basketball, so his May posts were a little less interesting. I think I'll be studying that one.

Disney

Home video became available at the end of the Seventies, so I grew up at a time when you had one shot to see a great movie, and then, if you were lucky it'd be shown on ABC, NBC, CBS or PBS at some indeterminate time after that: at least a year or two.

The good news was that there was "The Wonderful World of Disney" on ABC on Sunday nights. Of course, that only worked until we got into fundamentalist Christianity BIG TIME and our Sunday evenings were booked up.

We were Wesleyans, which I happened to be proud of (though not proud enough to actually proselytize for). Wesleyans are an offshoot of Methodists who broke away because we couldn't abide the thought of slavery. We were abolitionists, whereas those who continued under the name of Methodist were content to await some sort of accommodation via the government. Those who weren't finding rationalizations for slavery in the Bible, that is.

I'm a Lutheran now, but I wouldn't be, if I could convince my wife to go to the local Wesleyan Church in Fridley, MN. (Just south of I-694, between Central Ave. and University Ave.) I wouldn't accept Lutheran teaching if I found it incompatible with the way I was raised, but the fact is... It's good. I've enjoyed all the sermons of all three of our pastors (so far), especially the new guy! I really like the way he sticks to the Biblical text, only diverging into personal tales about their application in his own life.

Whoa!! That should have been a separate post. The only reason I don't do it now is because I doubt that I'll get this material into a post later.

I was talking about Disney movies. Was Winnie the Pooh a Disney movie? I could find it here - I've probably stomped on it 10 times in the past month - but it's not worth it to look for it now. That was the first movie I remember seeing. And, I'm told, I spent half the movie crying in the lobby. I suspect "half" was an exaggeration, because, when we bought the Video, I remembered almost all of it.

But, alas, Winnie the Pooh was pretty much the last of Walt's efforts. I remember people bitching about what he did to weaken the morals of "Little Red Riding Hood" and others of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, which were all about avoiding wild animals, perverts, rapists and mass murderers (especially if they lived under bridges). But what Disney produced in the Seventies would have driven Walt to homicide himself. Look at Rescuers: the art is almost as bad as Hanna-Barbara. The actors who played the voices are fine: Bob Newhart, Zsa Zsa Gabor, a bunch of people I would have recognized at first utterance in 1976, but have completely forgotten now (except that I know I knew them then), et al.

I mean, For God's Sake! How in the Hell did anyone think that this movie belonged in the same genre as "Sleeping Beauty?"! I mean, it's not completely awful, like, say, "Morons from Outer Space," but it's nowhere near the quality of a "Pocahantas."

The advent of "Star Wars" was very much welcome after all that dreck, and I still feel enough gratitude that I will see the last prequel of that series, with the memories of the "heroes" and anti-heroes of early- and mid-Seventies movies and TV as my comparisons.

Steppenwolf? F*** me to tears!! I'll take Luke Skywalker any day!

Yeah, that's why I don't need Sartre.

Or Heideggar or Kierkegaard.

You scored as Existentialist. Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Mankind is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. Existentialist 81% Cultural Creative 63% Materialist 50% Postmodernist 44% Modernist 38% Fundamentalist 38% Idealist 31% Romanticist 25% What is Your World View? (corrected...again) created with QuizFarm.com

I don't consider it a condemnation that we're free, I consider it a blessing, as is the responsibility that comes with it to make a good thing of yourself. Rather than a bad thing... or a dead thing.

Yeah, Baby!! We are on the way!!

The competition for space tourists is heating up.

This is the way progress works: first, the people with plenty of money and leisure time buy the cool stuff (and take all the safety, financial and social risks), then the products and services are refined, costs are reduced, competition reduces prices and the rest of us get our shot at it.

Be patient: if you don't get to take a turn, be joyful that your descendants will.

I WIN!!!

I was afraid I was gonna be Princess Leia (I wanna sleep with her, not dress like her) or R2D2. At least I came off manly enough to be Luke.

This character is definitely bourgeois,

Clarence Cochran is a shopkeeper, after all. I wonder what his artistic preferences are.

David Carson, 20, of West Memphis fired four shots at Cochran with a. 45-caliber pistol, police said. One bullet struck Cochran in the left chest area, tearing through his diaphragm and liver before passing out his lower back. [ed. note: Ow! Ow-ow-ow-ow! Ow!] Cochran fired back with his. 38-caliber revolver. One shot struck Carson in the head, killing him.

A second assailant, whom police have named on an arrest warrant as Antonio Bass, 21, fled after he was shot in the shoulder by Cochran. He is still at large.

Within a day of the shootout, Crittenden County sheriff's investigator Ed Laxton assured Cochran's family that he wouldn’t face criminal charges.

I also wonder why this article says that Antonio Bass was captured upon seeking treatment, while this recent article I've quoted says he's still at large.

Philistia goes down 10-zip to the Long Hairs

I got a pack of 10 Classical Music CDs at Sam's Club about a month ago, for about 20 bucks, and it's fantastic. I've discovered that there are five guys who put out stuff that you like right off the bat: Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel, Bach and Beethoven. Make it six; Tchaikovsky belongs there too.

Unfortunately the version of Pachelbel's Canon on the set is played too fast. It certainly shows off the skill of the musicians, and no doubt helps them stay awake after their ten-thousandth performance of it, but it loses its beauty.

The good news for bored musicians is that we have machines to do that now.

[A too-little, too-late, late-inning solo homer for the Philistines.]

AAGH! They booted Scotty!!

That dude sang On Broadway as well as it's ever been done! After last night's performance, Anthony deserved the boot.

I think all of 'em deserve a professional career like the one Constantine got [he was as good as Vonzell, at least, and better than either Scott or Anthony]. Kerry and Bo are the top two, and Bo is really the best.

But, I might seriously consider paying to see any of them, with a good band and arrangements.

I was going to say that NASA's getting on the stick

but it's another group, the B612 Foundation: they had a guy testifying to the Senate that we need to start moving asteroids around now, before they start moving us around.

Geez, that was a year ago. I wondering if anything's going on.

More Beautiful Sunday news.

Hopefully I'll come up with more to say than photo-chronologizing [that's not a word, sorry - your teacher will call it 'non-standard']



What the heck is wrong with my hydrangeas?



Bad soil?

Anyway, it was cold - low 50s - but very pretty. We played outside for about 3 hours. Rosie has a rock collection in her "tree-house," so we examined that quite a bit. I'm only good enough to classify rocks as igneous, metamorphic and/or sedimentary. And I can recognize quartz and calcium.

A bourgeois Sunday afternoon.

Sunday morning the youth group put on a musical in place of the service. We've got a girl in our church that needs to be on American Idol. She can belt out a jazz tune as well as I've ever heard - absolutely relaxed, smiling.

You'll see her name in public soon, but I don't feel the right to publish it.

The rest of the kids are all very good, and several may go into music and/or drama for a living. They had to memorize a lot of the gospel to do that play. The central character has a beautiful voice as well, and I was sad that we didn't hear more of it.

Well, I'd like to go into more detail, for my own benefit if nothing else, but it's Rosie's turn to play on the computer.

Since there are no pictures here, I'll do a pic-post of my beautiful Sunday.

Well, first we raced around like maniacs, getting ready for church. Laurie had to teach Sunday school, so I had the baby to myself and she's getting both rammier and more obedient. I should call her a toddler now, since she's been toddling for a while.

I call this "That's my baby...and her mess." Just try to kick back and relax after church on Sunday, and this is what you get.



Kneeling to beg my forgiveness.

I tend to just revel in watching my babies grow, and don't think of sharing that news. Rosie's a good reader and speller, too. She was rereading All Because of Winn-Dixie today.

Finally we decided she needed to get out of the house:



See the bubble? Aliina did:



The day closed with this vision:



This picture isn't mine, but I know who it belongs to, and I know the kid. But it deserves iconic status. I didn't experience this emotion today. It's called Bunny Frustrated:



Thanks to ImageShack for [URL=http://www.imageshack.us]Free Image Hosting[/URL]

Well, here we go!

A simple quiz for everyone. I am

46 years 9 months younger than Walter Cronkite, age 88
42 years 1 month younger than Nancy Reagan, age 83
39 years 2 months younger than George Herbert Bush, age 80
31 years 11 months younger than Barbara Walters, age 73
29 years 9 months younger than Larry King, age 71
23 years 6 months younger than Ted Koppel, age 65
20 years 1 month younger than Geraldo Rivera, age 61
17 years 1 month younger than George W. Bush, age 58
12 years 1 month younger than Jesse Ventura, age 53
7 years 10 months younger than Bill Gates, age 49
3 years 0 months younger than Cal Ripken Jr., age 44
2 years 11 months older than Mike Tyson, age 38
6 years 11 months older than Jennifer Lopez, age 34
12 years 5 months older than Tiger Woods, age 29
18 years 10 months older than Prince William, age 22



and that you were:
38 years old at the time of the 9-11 attack on America
36 years old on the first day of Y2K
34 years old when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash
31 years old at the time of Oklahoma City bombing
30 years old when O. J. Simpson was charged with murder
29 years old at the time of the 93 bombing of the World Trade Center
27 years old when Operation Desert Storm began
26 years old during the fall of the Berlin Wall
22 years old when the space shuttle Challenger exploded
20 years old when Apple introduced the Macintosh
19 years old during Sally Ride's travel in space
17 years old when Pres. Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr.
16 years old at the time the Iran hostage crisis began
12 years old on the U.S.'s bicentennial Fourth of July
10 years old when President Nixon left office
8 years old when Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was shot
5 years old at the time the first man stepped on the moon
4 years old when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated
a 1 year old during the Watts riot
not yet 1 year old at the time President Kennedy was assassinated

I'm most disturbed to find that I'm

9 years 4 months older than Alyssa Milano, age 32
20 years 0 months older than Mila Kunis, age 21

I've been hot for both of them since I first saw them.

I might be a philistine, but I wouldn't go this far

I mean, liking the best stuff from the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries is hardly anti-bourgeois, and can in no wise be taken as avant garde.

Watch your asses, now!

An incident from Two Years Before the Mast that I had forgotten:

The night after this event, when I went to the galley to get a light, I found the cook inclined to be talkative, so I sat down on the spars, and gave him an opportunity to hold a yarn. I was the more inclined to do so, as I found that he was full of the superstitions once more common among seamen, and which the recent death had waked up in his mind. He talked about George’s having spoken of his friends, and said he believed few men died without having a warning of it, which he supported by a great many stories of dreams, and the unusual behavior of men before death. From this he went on to other superstitions, the Flying Dutchman, etc., and talked rather mysteriously, having something evidently on his mind. At length he put his head out of the galley and looked carefully about to see if any one was within hearing, and being satisfied on that point, asked me in a low tone- 8
"I say! you know what countryman 'e carpenter be?" 9
"Yes," said I, "he's a German." 10
"What kind of a German?" said the cook. 11
"He belongs to Bremen," said I. 12
"Are you sure o' dat?" said he. 13
I satisfied him on that point by saying that he could speak no language but the German and English. 14
"I'm plaguy glad o' dat," said the cook. "I was mighty 'fraid he was a Fin. I tell you what, I been plaguy civil to that man all the voyage. 15
I asked him the reason of this, and found that he was fully possessed with the notion that Fins are wizards, and especially have power over winds and storms. I tried to reason with him about it, but he had the best of all arguments, that from experience, at hand, and was not to be moved. He had been in a vessel to the Sandwich Islands, in which the sail-maker was a Fin, and could do anything he was of a mind to. This sail-maker kept a junk bottle in his berth, which was always just half full of rum, though he got drunk upon it nearly every day. He had seen him sit for hours together, talking to this bottle, which he stood up before him on the table. The same man cut his throat in his berth, and everybody said he was possessed. 16
He had heard of ships, too, beating up the gulf of Finland against a head wind and having a ship heave in sight astern, overhaul and pass them, with as fair a wind as could blow, and all studding-sails out, and find she was from Finland. 17
"Oh, no!" said he; "I’ve seen too much of them men to want to see 'board a ship. If they can't have their own way, they'll play the d--l with you." 18
As I still doubted, he said he would leave it to John, who was the oldest seaman aboard, and would know, if anybody did. John, to be sure, was the oldest, and at the same time the most ignorant, man in the ship; but I consented to have him called. The cook stated the matter to him, and John, as I anticipated, sided with the cook, and said that he himself had been in a ship where they had a head wind for a fortnight, and the captain found out at last that one of the men, whom he had had some hard words with a short time before, was a Fin, and immediately told him if he didn’t stop the head wind he would shut him down in the fore peak. The Fin would not give in, and the captain shut him down in the fore peak, and would not give him anything to eat. The Fin held out for a day and a half, when he could not stand it any longer, and did something or other which brought the wind round again, and they let him up. 19
"There," said the cook, "what you think o' dat?" 20
I told him I had no doubt it was true, and that it would have been odd if the wind had not changed in fifteen days, Fin or no Fin. 21
"Oh," says he, "go 'way! You think, 'cause you been to college, you know better than anybody. You know better than them as has seen it with their own eyes. You wait till you've been to sea as long as I have, and you'll know."