Three Percent Compound Rate

“Can it get any better than this?” It was his favorite phrase. In fact I never heard him say any thing else. He repeatedly asked it of me. “Can it get any better than this?” “It’s getting close,” I replied the first time. The weather was a little cool, but I was not complaining. I also thought it might be better if there had been fewer RVs about,  including his. Trail Dog is bored. He has a big tick on his lower lip. I try to pick it off but he howls and tries to bite me. OK, I give up. Later I was able to squish it. He licked the blood from my fingers.

US golfers last year played the fewest number of rounds since 1995, playing a total of 462 million. More golf courses have closed than opened for the last eight years. Last year 14 18-hole courses opened and 158 closed. Of the closures 97% were public courses.

Are You Tight? – Dashaill Hammett

‘You ought to have known I’d do it!

Didn’t I steal a crutch from a cripple?’

When the last pocket had been turned out,

I returned to my own chair,

Rolled and lighted a cigarette,

And began to examine the spoils

A good pair – neither of us would think of taking a life,

Unless assured of profit and political protection

Later , we tumbled out of the Hall of Justice

And into a machine

‘You do what you want, but if I were you,

 I’d tell him the truth or nothing.

I mean leave out the parts you don’t want to tell him,

But don’t make up anything to take its place.’

And he told me right out that ‘I’m a man

Who likes talking to a man that likes talking’

Talking is something you can’t do judiciously

Unless you keep in practice

‘Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Yes, sir!’

He said it oftener than that,

But that will give you the idea

At the strike of the gong it was

Five thirty-one and one quarter.

Eastern Standard Time

But he wanted results, it seemed, and not questions,

And so I wasted nearly an hour getting information

That he could have given me in fifteen minutes

My thick fingers made deliberate care,

shifting a measured quantity of tan flakes

Into curved paper, spreading the flakes

So that they lay equal at the ends

With a slight depression in the middle,

My thumb was rolling the paper cylinder’s ends

To hold it even my tongue licked the flap,

Left forefinger and thumb pinching their ends

While my right forefinger and thumb smoothed the damp seam,

Right forefinger and thumb twisting their ends

And I lifted the other end to my mouth

But where knowledge of trickery is evenly distributed,

Honesty not infrequently prevails

Fifty years of sleuthing had left me

Without any feeling at all on any subject

I put the cigarette in my mouth,

Set fire to it, and laughed smoke out

The whole of that quality in mankind which strives

Toward simplifications of life’s phenomena, unifications,

Urged me to belief in connection

I took out my lighter, snapped on the flame,

And applied it to the end of the cigarette

I looked up at her and smiled,

Holding the finished cigarette in one hand,

The lighter in the other

I wasn’t sure I was going to like the party.

‘I like an even break or better,

And this doesn’t look like one.’

‘I see,’ she sneered.

‘You don’t think I’m naughty,

You think I’m bump.’

‘Behave, sister.

That’s no way to act.’

‘Jesus, you women,’

I said idly

She went down on her knees at my knees...

‘I haven’t lived a good life,’ she cried.

‘I’ve been bad – worse than you could know –

But I’m not all bad’

‘You don’t believe me?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘And you won’t forgive me for – for what I did?’

‘Sure I do.’ I bent and kissed her mouth.

‘That’s all right. Now run along.’

I’m not so hard to get along with,

I’ll play anybody’s game up to a certain point

‘Are you tight’

‘Not yet’, I replied

‘Why don’t you stay sober tonight?”’ She asked me.

‘Why not we stay sober tonight’, I told her

On my desk a limp cigarette smoldered in a brass tray filled

With the remains of other limp cigarettes.

Ragged gray flakes dotted the yellow of the desk

And the green blotter and the papers that were there

‘Meet the biggest-hearted dick in San Francisco.

This guy will do anything for anybody,

If only he can send ‘em over for life in the end’

‘Shoo her in, darling’, I said.

‘Shoo her in’

I’d rather lie to her

Than have her think I’m lying

‘Stop me when you can?’ She replied arrogantly

‘Maybe you’d like a drink,’ I suggested,

Opening a drawer of the desk,

Neither the girl nor I wasted energy on conversation.

My client and I didn’t seem to like each other very much.

Murder doesn’t round out anybody’s life except the murdered’s

And sometimes the murderer’s.

‘That may be’, she said, ‘but it is all pretty unsatisfactory.’

Sometimes one has to make some allowance for stupidity… Why create additional complications – Leon Trotsky – My Life, 1930 p267

Tend trout line

Fill freezer

            Ice white

Stack ‘em

            Tight

Provision

            To last

The cold weather

            As per forecast

If strung like beads on a necklace all the virsues on earth would make a string 10 million light years long or about 100 times across the Milky Way. Up to 2% of the weight of the human body is composed of virsues and bacteria. The skin is our biggest organ, it makes up 10% of body weight.

Institutions do not contain; they constrain

A culture has porous boundaries. A society does not

Savages are easily satisfied with cheap beads in the following colors: dull white, dark brown and vermillion red. Expensive beads are often spurned by them. Nonsavages should be given cheap books in the following colors: dead white, brown and seaweed. Books praising the sea are much sought after – Donald Bartheleme – Sixty Stories

Albert Einstein had horrible arithmetic skills. A lot of what we call intelligence results from practice (discipline and persistence) at specific skills

I can’t imagine her with children, he thought. And I know that, whatever happens, I won’t be growing old beside her. He could imagine her in later years, amid books and papers, slim and elegant…., a single woman with class, and wrinkles fanning from her eyes, …a broken fan, a jet necklace, a record of Italian songs from the fifties, the photo of an old lover. My photo he fantasized. Oh, God, if only it could be my photo - - Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Nautical Chart, 2001 p199

American schools now have more minority students than they have non-Hispanic whites: 25% Hispanic, 15% Black, and 5% Asian and Pacific Islander, plus biracial and Native Americans. In the country as a whole whites are expected to become a minority in 2043. One in five children speak a language other than English at home