What's in Your Portfolio

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by tw

If not averaging 8% annually on that money, then you are losing money.

No. I'm not making more money. Big difference.

[Happy Monkey]

It depends on inflation, and your definition of "money".

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

You know what would make me look really stupid right now?

A picture of you sitting next to your wood stove that you use exclusively to heat your apartment.

I'm prepared to look stupid, so bring it. If I am wrong I will admit it. It's something I do regularly. It would really change my opinion of you. I would apologize for a long time. You can even fuzz out your face, or paint over it with MS Paint, but it will have to be in an apartment setting. And with "cellar.org 4/30/2013, fuck you undertoad" written on a piece of paper in the frame.

Pictures are worth a thousand words so you wouldn't even have to accompany it with a wall of text. Just the picture alone would be enough. And although you and I got nothing but time, this should take between 5 and 15 minutes to accomplish.

No.

Were I to comply with your suggestion, I would be the one looking incredibly stupid, not you. As you may recall, this territory has already been covered when I was still foolish enough to play the game. I jumped through the hoops back then, but I guess not high enough because a few people STILL weren't satisfied. Were I to respond with "How high" to your command of "Jump!" I can already see the responses that would ensue:

Looks like a house to me. PROVE it's an apartment.

PROVE it's really YOUR apartment and not that of one of your brain dead friends.

Prove that funky thing you call a stove still works.

Please send a picture of your JUNIPER wood pile with you standing next to it holding up a sign reading "I am an IDIOT" and giving the date.

And many more variations along those lines, since we are an imaginitive and snarky crowd around here.

All of the above is moot anyway, since I don't really care what some stranger on the Internet thinks. Heck for all I know, "Undertoad" doesn't even exist. He's just Pensive Pam's sock puppet. In fact, I have an idea:

You go round up all the Philly members of the Cellar you can find and have them stand next to you holding up signs that give the date and have the words "I am (Cellar Username) and the man I'm pointing to really IS UT. You can stand in the center of the pic, holding up a sign with the words "I REALLY am Undertoad" with the date clearly written below that.

It's up to you, but I think it's more fun to just exchange snarky yet clever insults and comments. Hint: "Bullshit factory" is not especially clever, but I'll let it go this time.

Love,
Sam

[Undertoad]

Well if you did have one, in your apartment, which you don't, I'd advise you to get rid of it -- it's a huge indoor carbon monoxide generator, and a huge outdoor polluter of particulate carbon.

My grandparents lived in the white mountains of northern New Hampshire. My grandfather selectively harvested trees by hand on his private farm. He built huge woodpiles to get ready for the -20F winter nights. He generally had two cords of seasoned hardwood stacked up on the side of the house. But he still needed oil to get through most of the winter.

You're disabled sweetie. You get weak. You aren't out there hunting and gathering and seasoning juniper for the harsh Colorado winter.

If you don't want to bear the terrible questioning of the Cellar crowd: just stop lying. But if you don't, here's a hint: you don't need endless walls of weaselly text to defend the truth.

[IamSam]

Brevity is the soul of wit:

My current apt: 600 sq ft (+ or - )
Grandma & Grandpa UT's home: sq ft not given

Max and Min temp averages for JAN - MARCH 1981- 2010 (Nat'l Climate Data):

Cortez, CO (High Desert, elev 6,168 ft)

DEC 42.5 F (Max), 17.5 F (min)
JAN 42.3 F (Max), 15.9 F (min)
FEB 45.9 F (Max), 21.2 F (min)

Town Unknown, NH (White Mountains, Ball Mtn Lake, elev 1,129 ft used as an aproximation)

DEC 34.0 F (Max), 15.0 F (min)
JAN 28.6 F (Max), 7.5 F (min)
FEB 32.6 F (Max), 10.4 F (min)

Note that Cortez has average winter temps roughly 10 degrees HIGHER than the White Mountains do.

The "Utah" juniper, one of the most common trees in the southwest, has the ability to self-prune. During droughts, these trees will cut off fluids from one or more branches so that the rest of the tree can survive.

The dead branches near the foot of the tree will often just break off. They are already dried when you harvest them.

Juniper ~ 24 BTU/cord. It burns at 60% to 90% efficiency depending on type of stove used. Wood smoke can try to pollute the air around here, but it doesn't stand a chance against the pollution from the coal burning 4-Corners Power Plant.

We're having one of the worst droughts ever here in SW CO. I can walk around just fine (unfortunately).

Despite this, my friend Carmen's husband has a little business on the side selling firewood. Now and then some accidently falls off his truck when he passes my place and no one is around. He's promised me that he'll try not to be so careless next time.

You can't turn the White Mountains into the Rockies, no matter how much you may long to make me appear "weaselly" by doing so.

[Undertoad]

Sweetie,

Here is the thread where your GAS furnace died, you got a NEW one, and your landlord provided you electric space heaters as a temporary alternative, which you used, although you found them to be expensive.

Originally Posted by samiam

Well, last week my furnace decided to die. It made a bunch of weird, loud, clicking sounds and gave up the ghost. I called up the Slumlords and left a message that the furnace was no longer of this world and that I was getting pretty cold. This was over the weekend, and I didn't hear anything back from them until Monday (I wore lots of sweaters, meanwhile).

Monday morning, Mrs Slumlord calls me up all chirpy and tells me that she talked with a friend who works for an outfit funded by the state that helps low income people (ie me) who have heating emergencies during the winter months. In fact Mrs. Slumlord's office is in the very same building as the state outfit, and her friend had given her the application forms to give me to fill out to apply for emergency help as a low income, disabled person.

Mrs. Slumlord generously added that while we were waiting for the state to come through with a new furnace, Mr. Slumlord would drop off a couple of those oil filled heating thingies that run off electricity. (Electric bills here are listed in krugerrands, btw).

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

It depends on inflation, and your definition of "money".

My definition of money is U.S. currency. That which can be used for food, weed, beer, gasoline, whores, vehicles, tools, and whatnot.

And, yes, those were listed in order of importance.

Still not losing money.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

My definition of money is U.S. currency.

In number of dollars, or in how much they can be traded...

... for food, weed, beer, gasoline, whores, vehicles, tools, and whatnot.

Cash keeps its dollar value, but not necessarily its purchasing power.

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Sweetie,

Here is the thread where your GAS furnace died, you got a NEW one, and your landlord provided you electric space heaters as a temporary alternative, which you used, although you found them to be expensive.

Ah, Shugah,

That winter was a real bitch for us folks out here in western Colorado. I remember it well. You know what the real shit kicker was? A previous tenant had installed a nice little wood burner in the living room, and I wasn't allowed to use it. In all the years that stove had been there and folks had been burning juniper in it and staying toasty warm, Slumlord never bothered to have the chimney checked for creosote build-up or have it cleaned. The entire 4-plex probably would have burned down faster than you could say "hell fire" if I tried to light so much as a wooden match in that stove's fuel box.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

In number of dollars, or in how much they can be traded...Cash keeps its dollar value, but not necessarily its purchasing power.

That still hasn't removed money from my possession.

Why is this fact so goddamned hard for people to accept.

I got mine.

Barring a major fucktastrophe, I won't need anymore til I'm sixty-eight. I won't be buyin no Ferraris, mind you, not even a used Harley.

Why would I risk investment at all for money I will not need. In all likelihood, I won't live long enough to spend what I got.

And I don't really want to anyway.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

but not necessarily its purchasing power.

I hadn't noticed that in the last, oh, say, 44 yrs of living.

Fuck this, I'm done.

[Lamplighter]

I don't remember the exact words, but today there was the interview,
with the Director of the Funeral Home that was taking care of the body of the Boston Marathon bomber.
They were interviewing him because at least 3 cemeteries had supposedly refused to bury the body.

This man was of interest to me because his professional and personal ideals were
that he would serve everyone, regardless of their history or ability to pay.

He used an example of a woman who did not have enough $ to pay for her husband's funeral,
and he said he did the funeral just as he would if she had paid the full amount.

This is a long introduction, but it was his next comment that was of interest to me.
He said: "Money is only good for the good that you can do with it"

See Gravdigr... great minds do run along the same path.

[Undertoad]

That may be the ideal profession to have such a stance on money.

Nobody can take advantage of your generosity until it's too late.

[Nirvana]

Farm land its better than owning others companies ..if there are live people they will always need to eat...

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

That may be the ideal profession to have such a stance on money.

Nobody can take advantage of your generosity until it's too late.

And the markups are so enormous you can afford to throw in a free ride now and again. There is no con as beautiful as the funeral con, put my carcass under a tree or cut it up for science.