So today, I went outside.
I had purchased an 8-stop Amtrak Rail Pass for $430. To and from Cincinnati is two stops each way, so a trip to scout and a trip to move should be just covered by the rail pass. This adds up to $215 per visit, or $110 each way, extremely favorable compared to air travel. As it should be. Of course, each leg of the trip is 6-18 hours long, but I find air travel so loathsome that I would prefer twice as long in a train than an airplane.
I had to go to Amtrak to collect the pass, so today, I did that.
The trip was put on my Amtrak VISA. I had taken the rent money my parents put in my checking account and transferred it to my personal PayPal account, then billed the rent to another credit card. This was necessary because I can pay rent with a credit card, but putting a down payment on another apartment requires cash or cash-equivalents. The apartment would require only about $700 for down payment etc, and I'd set aside $1050 for the purpose. The plan is, to move, then pay off the costs of the move (calculated at slightly under $3000) over the next eight months off the savings on rent (a little over $400 a month). The calculation left a difference of a few hundred bucks in my PayPal debit account, technically billed to my credit card, but - feast or famine, as they say.
So - with those rationalizations in mind - on the way, I stopped at the local CeX used electronics store and picked up a copy of Pokemon Diamond for $25. I have Emerald, HeartGold and Black in my pouch. HeartGold is complete, but I can't transfer the Pokemon from HeartGold to Black without a second DS, and would prefer to transfer them to the second iteration of B/W, and don't have the money to buy another DS and game at this point. On the other hand, I still have Pokemon in Emerald that I eventually want to move forward to HeartGold and from there to B/W 2, but I want those Pokemon - which I caught in Pokemon Colosseum - to get every single ribbon in Emerald before being moved forward; I intend to make those my "typical Aestu lameness" Pokemon. Progress in Emerald, however, is held up by the berry supply and waiting for the PokeBlock Master event to spawn. So while I wait on Emerald's internal clock and IRL cash, I decided it would be most logical to begin progress on another iteration of the game.
Use a Gameshark? What's the fun in that?
There was a long, long line at CeX, and the tram to and from Amtrak was a good hour each way. So while I was waiting to buy a Pokemon game, I stood there and read
The Federalist Papers. The book was written in that eye-rolling 18th century British English, with three times as many words as necessary and long panegyrics about absolutely nothing, but still worth reading.
RON PAUL asks how many people have "actually read" the Constitution. The better question is how many people understand it. The Federalist Papers are considered the must-read on the topic - the Founding Fathers discussing the thinking and ideas underscoring their drafting of the Constitution - but of course Ron Paul would never challenge his audience by asking whether they ever read it or not.
Quote:
First off, the Federalist Papers are decidedly anti-states' rights. Again and again Hamilton and Madison drum out the theme that the states must absolutely be subordinate to the federal government, and that any secession must be quashed because it would lead to the decimation of the American people: endless feuding between rival confederacies and foreign governments coming in to take advantage of the situation.
Hamilton is decidedly against a sales tax, as well as against local governments being the main pillar of the tax base and government power. His arguments are as valid now as then: a sales tax is ineffectual against property, which is the basis of wealth, and that local governments can't govern effectively if they have to endanger their ledgers to compete with other states. Hamilton claims that a safe and free state must have a strong - and well-funded - government.
The Federalist Papers shed a strong - and unequivocal - light on the Second Amendment. The FFs are believers in a well-regulated militia and a federal navy. The FFs see professional armies as unequivocally evil, and, to them, the "well-regulated militia" is the proper antithesis. Presciently, the FFs warn of "citizens who see soldiers as not only servants but superiors," and that the grasp of tyranny is "very hard to break" under such conditions.
Hamilton and Madison are utterly contemptuous of the idea that commercialization and free markets can bring about peace and justice. They point out that people wage war for want and greed just as easily as for conquest and domination, and that regions are inherently unequal in their productivity. They are strong advocates of barriers to trade, tariffs, and vigilant federal regulation of the free market.
Hamilton and Madison cast the Northern "hive" in favorable opposition to the "delicate" South. And they warn about "jealousies" between rival regions of the country, about the South's fear of losing control. Very prescient.
There are some interesting omissions. The FFs point out the strengths of a federal government over a loose confederation, or a bunch of petty rival states, and the strength of pluralism over political homogenity, but they never quite define what the rightful definitions of the state are. They seem to believe that the state should be defined by the nation, but then they say that the British Isles' three nations should be governed by one just state, even though they are very different peoples with different languages and culture, and even in their own time America was a pretty diverse country.
The FFs lay down the gauntlet, asserting their new idea of accountable, democratic federal government as a direct challenge to "old Europe", but they never seem to contemplate that their own self-acknowledged adoption of Classical and Continental political ideas might establish a precedent for the Europeans to look over their shoulders and steal some ideas back. Perhaps the omission was intentional; perhaps they wanted to present themselves as realists, not futurists. Either way, the EU very obviously draws from the ideology of the FFs, something much more evident when examining those ideas in the abstract.
The FFs make reference to the Native Americans, implying they believe that the better people of the United States want peace with them, and lay the blame on violent provincial rednecks for assaulting the "innocent" natives. Yet they seem to exhibit a strange incuriousity about their way of life. The FFs make all kinds of assertions about the land of America and about human nature, but they never for a moment seek to test their assumptions against the Native Americans. It's an ominous foreboding that despite their belief that the rednecks should be restrained from assaulting these people, the FFs don't actually seem to see them as people - as part of the human experience.
The FFs put a lot of faith in a pluralist political system to prevent injustices, and they believe in the power of law to protect the rights of a minority. They believe that in federal systems, the few great states will naturally ally against the many small ones - a prediction well borne out by the frequent alliance of NY/CA against the Midwest and South. The kind of scenario we see in the case of Greece, however - the bullying of the few and small by the great - never seems to occur to them.
Obviously, the FFs never imagined the far-reaching impact that technological developments such as high-powered weapons, powerful energy sources, automation and mass communications would have on society. Nor does it ever occur to them that ideology or economics could not only superimpose itself on the national state, but actually supplant nationalism as the defining metric of human politics. Most interestingly, they take the extraordinary abundance of the American environment as both the basis of American power - and as a given. Environmental degradation and the need to defend against it never occurred to them. Easy come, easy go, I suppose.
Anyway, I arrived at the Goodwill near my place in Boston and went in. Some stupid feminist had recently moved, or hopefully got run over by a truck, or something, because she had donated all her crap to the store. I could tell by the expensive designer shoes and purses and the abundance of tasteless feminist literature. A surprising portion of my best possessions are the former property of feminists, often procured for free when they simply abandon them. They are, in my experience, incredibly profligate.
Needless to say, her loss was my gain. I bought up a bunch of things - some desktop books on law, a
nice handpainted picture of a flower (simplistic, but handcrafted, and very cheap, $1 for the frame and $2 for the picture, a good a way as any to add some color to my room), a 1926 edition of Robinson Crusoe ($1, cheaper than a fresh printing and still small enough to fit in my pocket) and...her
purse and shoes. The purse cost $2, the shoes $7. I planned to turn the latter two over...and if I couldn't? Marginal loss. Seemed like a risk worth taking.
I also bought a pair of really nice snow goggles for $1. Never know when I might need those, don't want to pay retail. Presumably the property of this same feminist, who really liked to travel. When I shook her former handbag clean, a bar of Holiday Inn soap tumbled out.
So, I walked on home, reading the
Federalist Papers, carrying a Pokemon bag and with a satchel filled with women's clothing. 27 years old, handsome, good posture, I enjoy walking. I felt very manly.
Which brings me to begging the assistance of FUBU women. Can you tell me more about
these things? The brands are Sporto and Gloria Vanderbilt respectively. Like what exactly is this purse - is it a tote, a handbag, or what's the proper term? Can you give me insight into what women look for in these things, how to market/move them? How much would you pay, if you were in the market?
