4.4 trillion projected deficit + cost of Iraq "war" and occupation + Japanese impending bank implosion + $40+/barrel sweet crude + housing bubble + predominant tax breaks for top 5% + highest unemployment rate since last Bush recession + a thousand points of Perle's imperialist light + a yellow ribbon around your neck = tick, tick, tick...
Hey, but that metal box sure does sound great!
Sell the Rowlands, consolidate, baton down the hatches, play scrabble while the storm passes over. |
Oh, I know, 4yanjx, just stirring the pot-o-bit, don't you know; someone told me once it was the essence of democracy. (Things ahave been a bit calm around audiogon lately).
Not squeezing me, though, but sure is some people down the road (look out your car as you pass...). On second thought, if one does, in fact, identify with other people, then might just be squeezing that person too, ie empathic identification is a little more than just "world events", although that abstraction does have an intriguing distancing quality about it. On pessimism: who was it that said, "Wish for things exactly as they happen"? Anyway, yes, leave unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, metaphorically his lack of empathy for the other, but that doesn't mean deny that what he is doesn't exist. Can you say, embedded aristocratic corporate oligarchy with their own 'lil army? Hmmm...Yes, economically speaking, the empire will do just fine after it swallows this next thing, and, as such, we all as citizens of the realm will reap the profits at some point. But, will we also reap the wind, reap what has been sown?
I like the point thing though. Problem is that I don't know what Bezique is (!) or what verjuice means (!), so you would have to educate me there. But I still get what you were trying to say, I hope.
Oh BTW, I'm not really playing scrabble and hiding in a bunker; I'm hear talking to you...
Oh yea, I like Rowland just fine. |
4yanx, I knew it was tongue in cheek from you. I thought it was funny, actually. I need to use smiley faces more I think. Also, still stirring, can't help myself. My apologies for using you as a foil, but if I admitted the foil part then we couldn't get these guys out of the woodwork. Thanks again for the chuckle. Your responses are very interesting, at least to me, and they make me think.
MacIntrash, love it! Now that's FUNNY!
Ohn: "reasonable quality food." My my...matter processed for the masses with chemicals added to stay here longer. Are they food companies or chemical companies that process processed food? Regardless of context, ie price, doesn't something drop below the radar of quality, any "reasonable" utility, at some point? If they put a two stroke lawn mower engine on a Harley, what would be the point, regardless if someone who was poor could afford it? As you said, either you know or you don't...I sympathize with your compassion for the meek, financially speaking in the context of the "american project", but maybe start with the horse before the cart: maybe, just maybe, the problem is in an acceptance of the means, especially when it means eating a horse, analogically speaking. We have enough food now to feed everyone all over the world and not kill another mind; its just a distribution problem, and one of greater empathy than just for the $2 dollar guy, problems that multinational food processing companies would like to catalyze, not cure. Of course, just my opinion... |
Ohn: "distribution" conotes distribut-ing, which is an action. All human actions originate from the mind. Similarly, a political hierarchy, in our case, democratic-capitalism, is an abstraction that hides its deeper, truer meaning. To illustrate, I can not walk out my front door and point to "democracy" or "capitalism" because they are words that denote a collective state of mind; in our case, conformism by a group of minds we call "America" who conform to certain ideas. Again, you are still brought back to the origin; that the mind decides. There is no structure apart from the minds which envision it, and that abstraction only becomes a "thing" when those minds assume that it is the only truth, or the only possibility for the collective. Economies of scale - that alot of minds eat processed food, so, therefore, the truth is defined by their actions - confises what I was taliking about, namely, that it not a political issue, but an evolutionary one. If you say, "Well, everyone else is doing it so it must be right" then you conform to others mind's rules. This conformism keeps you from seeing that the empathy I mentioned is not perceived by "happiness", or the desire to stimulate instinctual pleasure centers of the mind, but is found through transcending that desire for materialism, ie empathy is attained through perception of meaning, not simply pleasure.
Oh BTW, Harleys seem cool to me...(as a machine and apart from their internal combustion heritage) |
On Rowland: if you look at many "hi end" markets, not just audio, you can see this initial erosion in consumer confidence and buying power. For instance, last month wine auctions at ChristiesNY were off considerably on Bordeaux even though bottles submitted for auction were also up precipitously. Certainly, the richest will keep buying the Screaming Eagle Cabernets, but Rowland is not a Japanese AudioNote Kondo SE amp, and the wealthiest discriminate against the difference in terms of cache (which, without commenting on the relative merits of a Kondo vs. a Tenor, can be translated as, what will produce another of my socio-economic stata to covet what I have). Rowland falls in the demographic of upper middle class to upper-upper middle class, as far as price goes. It is this strata that is just beginning to feel the erosion that is moving up from the bottom stratas - even as the upper middle class deny it in default to the droning light ray connected from FOX News to their foreheads.
I can not say for certain that the Rowland situation here is necessarily following this trend, but many other such products are following similar arcs and market weakeness trends on ebay.
If there are any collectors out there with other hobbies, I would like to hear their comments on this.
Ohn: you are a paragon of restraint :0) |
Macrojack: you said it all. Pretty soon, me too, I'll just be listening to the music on a nice small system and fade off into the distance...It does make me sad though, to see people like yourself who love music forced from that retreat. I have said this before: the audio hiend is in trouble - and you are right, the attrition has been occuring, at a deeper level, for ten or so years now. This is happening because, underlying even that, is a decline in our society's valuing of things vs. meaning; we accumulate things in the hopes of finding meaning. This happens in most empires eventually. Pull up a seat, you have a front row view...Rowland being dumped is only a very minor surface eddy. There will be other oscillations...
I tip my hat to the brethren and say, this too shall pass. |
Macro, I'm loving this! Funny!
Pendulums, yes, but oscillations bifurcate at increasingly progressive rates. The Earth is a mirror. Look outside, the pendulum is shaking; its not just about the stability of political structures of the species Homo sapiens over historic time, but all consciousness over evolutionary time.
Anyway, thanks again for the belly laugh! |
