VALENTINES DAY
Am I the only one who
walks into the grocery store ( about the only retail establishment besides
Family Dollar, or if I ever see one again a true dollar store, that I frequent
) the day after a holiday, sees the display up for the next holiday, throws my
hands up and beseeches the fall of western civilization? Goodness, how my displeasure grows as ever
year Christmas is pimped for earlier and earlier. When every and any minor holiday is an excuse
to sell more pointless plastic crap, it just becomes wearying to the bone after
awhile.
*
I can place money on the
odds of Valentines Day already being displayed, the cute synthetic fabric
animals stuffed by Asian children grinning at me in romantic bliss, buy me and
show your gal you love her! Which, okay,
isn’t so bad. The NOL loves frogs the
way I love Hello Kitty ( she found a ceramic frog-in an Ace Hardware of all
places-showing a sitting Pa Frog reading and alongside him Ma Frog talking on
the phone. It was so Us it is scary ),
and I was getting her those stuffed frogs.
*
Anniversary, Valentines,
birthday. The bed was covered by stuffed
animals until we got another shelf in the bedroom. And I got lucky in that not only did I NOT
have to get her those ridiculously monopoly priced diamond jewelry gifts-her
expectations being low, I can always get the traditional thank you for diamonds
anyway-so in your face, bitches. But
then, after it became apparent that our relationship was going to stick, I
stopped getting the dust catchers. It
was time to move up the scale on gift giving, to sterling silver jewelry.
*
Sterling Silver is
great. It isn’t pure ( 92.5, I believe )
so it isn’t as expensive. For the price
of a bunch of flowers or a larger stuffed animal, you can get a smaller silver
item. And here is the important part. The reason we discuss it today. This is the perfect prepper item you can buy
your wife, half a dozen times a year. It
is an investment, a store of value, a hidden prepper stockpile she has no idea
has anything to do with your crazy hobby.
It is girly foo-foo stuff, yo!
And you haven’t wasted money on a soon to be trashed or Thrift Store
donated gift. You haven’t really “spent”
money at all, just transferred it into savings.
*
The wife is happy, which
in my experience through most of my life, from my mother to all my
relationships until the current one, is on par with a Bigfoot sighting or a
Leprechaun being discovered riding a glitter farting unicorn. Why can’t bitches be happy? Hey, I wouldn’t want to bleed out once a
month, go through nine months of pain followed by a year of some conehead
leeching the calcium out of my bones through feeding, followed by The Change
where you get hot flashes and mood swings last seen as a teenager, but Jesus
bitches, is your entire life THAT bad? There are upsides, too.
*
Anyway, sterling silver
jewelry is a nice selfish prepper stockpile for you, and if you are smart
enough to NOT let on to that fact, a declaration of your undying love to
her. Okay, a FEW, a very few, gals want
another gun as a gift ( there was some little hottie on You Tube who does trick
shooting hitting an inch within an egg, at 300 friggin yards! The rounds hitting kicked up less dirt than a
Daisy Lil’ Cowboy BB gun, or a Wiffle Ball thrown by a wheelchair bound girl,
they had so little energy left in them-caution, overly optimistic rimfire
proponents-but that crap is like 1/3 inch MOA, and shooting offhand! ), but not
many.
*
I tell you this now
because you’ll want to order early, through my links. Most are going for $10 to $20, thin rings or
small earrings or tiny necklaces. There
is a LOT to pick from-just search Sterling Silver Jewelry at Amazon. Get them before the holiday. You could go down to the pawn job, where I
traditionally always bought the stuff for my ex’s, but the selection and
pricing isn’t as good as it used to be, in my opinion. Of course, when gold was $400 an ounce, and
silver $7, I had the option of buying low caret gold jewelry. Not anymore.
*
Which is fine. Gold jewelry has too many variables, whereas
Sterling is consistent and you know exactly what you are getting ( I’m sorry, but you are one of the world’s
biggest D-Bags if you buy diamond jewelry.
Silver, and gold, are already seeing mining shortages. You are buying a finite product that can only
go UP, once the artificial suppression from the bankers derivatives markets
subside. Diamonds are DeBeers monopoly
controlled for an artificially inflated price and are akin to water in the
desert pricing-only valuable under artificial conditions. If you aren’t shoving something up your ass
to smuggle your wealth away in, stay away from diamonds ).
*
And even then, half ounce
coins should fit if you are old, quarter or tenth ounce coins if young. Anyway, silver is the Industrial Age Poor’s
wealth preservation ( copper was, outside of the Oil Age ) and you can buy a
lot of it. I don’t buy one ounce silver
bullion anymore as I got plenty a dozen years ago when much cheaper, and am
more interested in other prep items like ammo and food now. More food is never a bad idea, followed by
more ammo. More precious metals is WAY
down the list. But silver jewelry to buy
love? You can never have enough of that
stuff.
*
Heck, I’d contemplate
stockpiling it prior to gifting it, as you never know when the price will
increase. That leaves you sitting stress
free at gift times. And you can just
randomly gift one to her for no reason.
I know gals like flowers, but I would think they all love jewelry
more. And have you priced flowers? Jesus, Joseph and Mary, every bouquet pays a
months mortgage for the florist and gives a new angel a set of wings. Go with the Good Stuff!
*
P.S.-the stuff was made in
Italy but now seems to be coming from China.
You can’t say how pure their silver is, so just beware.
END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2Ct6EKu )
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there
Mine doesn't want any more jewelery...so ?
ReplyDeleteLast week she was hiking around at her job at the zoo and the soles started crumbling off her hiking boots. She's had em like twelve years and walks 10-15 miles a day at work too.
So I went out yesterday to get her a new pair. Only ones she liked were the cheaper camo , men's "Merrill's". Luckily they didn't have them in her size...
So talked her into the women's version of the ones I have.
Not camo so she ain't happy...but they are very comfortable long lasting boots ! $140 but oh well she is worth it.
Not any special day either...
For Valentine's, I'll have to find a pair of camo ones ha ha
Was telling her that I'd buy Elko Jim a pair of em if I thought that I could get the right size. But shoes vary so much that ya just gotta be in person to size correctly.
Knowing you , your frugality would never allow spending that much for shoes tho. If they are even available in Helko ??
Long ago we pledged each other that for gift giving we'd only get for each other ...prep type stuff
And we consider you family Jim !
Damn, thanks buddy. I'm actually sending you a gift-so I beat you to it! Your old lady sounds like the perfect prepper wife. I told my NOL to not spend much at X-Mas but of course she did and now I have $50 to spend at Home Depot and $100 at wherever, for prep items. I was thinking axes at the Despot. Well, perhaps one ax, a back-up Maddox and shovel. Don't know when you'll be forced to dig again.
DeleteProbably the best axe at Home Depot is the Estwing. It'd be perfect for hacking up sagebrush and small things. It's not the best design for chopping (except for a light camp axe) for people in more treed areas because the blade design is long and thin and takes a while as the blade enters the wood before it starts splitting the wood. Light, handy, and sturdy. The best feature is if you overstrike your target, the handle (because it's steel), doesn't get chewed up.
DeletePeace out
Very helpful info-thank you. We'll probably go Saturday. Damn! Just looked online. Not cheap! Oh, well. Better a $50 all steel than a $20 crappy wooden handle.
DeleteDear, dear; Jim. Ever wonder what all the unhappy women you know have in common?
DeleteYou are right, Jim. I walked into a drug store to get a birthday card on Jan 4th. There staring me in the face were Valentines day cards.
ReplyDeleteA lot of times it seems they have a crew on the midnight of the holiday so at opening the next day you are violated by the new display.
DeleteSame here. Went to the grocery store on Saturday (1/8) and the Three C (Cards, Candy, and Crap) displays were set up right where you walked in. Sigh...
DeleteAt least you might-might!-make the case that the greeting cards have actually improved.
Delete“You haven’t really “spent” money at all, just transferred it into savings.”
ReplyDeleteWell, I was about to comment that today’s article sucked the chrome off of Richard Simmons trailer hitch, until I got to this line. That’s actually pretty darn clever 😀 So clever in fact, that I’ll bet that practically no one else thought of it.
Technically, silver should actually be more valuable, since it holds a wider variety of uses for industrial applications. I guess with gold it must be mostly due to the jewelry aspect, and whatever left over industrial applications it has.
It was perhaps a clever way of saying it, but it is only an original way of expressing the same truism everyone knows. Hopefully it sticks, the masses buy silver, I become famous and then I can die. Wait. And, forget the industrial applications of silver. That won't last much longer. It is merely important to us for its store of value. Glad I "saved" the article for you. Sometimes I just get a weird idea that arises I can't ignore and I have to go with it. You do NOT want to piss off your muse.
DeleteFyi
DeleteGold makes the best electrical contacts.
The only medal to not corrode.
That's why the aliens show up every few thousand years :)
“It was perhaps a clever way of saying it, but it is only an original way of expressing the same truism everyone knows.”
DeleteActually, I was referring more to your stealth savings plan. It’s so obvious that few probably ever thought about it before. Another thought is that fancy silverware set for when you have special company over for dinner, such as the super survivalist guru out of Idaho :D
2:46-I thought the aliens showed up when we reached enlightenment. Don't we now have that with multiculturalism? :)
Delete3:42-Okay, FINE! I'll take credit for being awesome :)
Another use for the silver would be silver bullets. Be the Lone Ranger or a Werewolf hunter!
DeleteHave you been reading "Monster Hunters"? :)
DeleteNot sure if you're aware of this but FerFal (Fernando Aguirre) has noted in his writings that when things went bad in Argentina there was still a market for plain gold and silver jewelry. Nothing fancy, just plain rings whose price was determined by the melt value of the gold or silver. He wrote that if he had to do it again he would have acquired a small bag of plain gold "junk" jewelry (wedding bands, broken gold necklaces, etc.) that he could sell at melt value.
ReplyDeleteIt must be a good book, as I waited forever for the price to go down in it. Got it a year or so ago, finally, but haven't read it yet. An obscure title I just heard about was "Going Galt", a prepping book. I haven't read that one yet, either.
Deletehttp://amzn.to/2De1vDP
David Bowie, in "Man Who Fell To Earth" had a pocket full of plain gold wedding bands to sell to pawn shops one at a time with great reluctance, to get spending money. They hose you, like a junkie with stolen merch, but you get some cash for eating and a room. The other side of this is that you can buy 14K rings at the tiniest premium to melt, because they need to get a minimum quantity before sending a batch for refining. You should be able to test each ring on your own equipment for gold before buying (electronic testers are becoming more affordable for the small operator to fight the huge pool of fake everything out there).
Deletepdxr13
Now there was a weird movie. Of course, wasn't he one of the first to make a career out of being weird for its own sake?
DeleteI read that a hundred years ago in India the gold and silver necklace's a women wore represented a percentage of the family's wealth. The links were 1/10 to 1 ounce each and made to be used as cash in trades.
ReplyDeleteI know India is still #1 or close to in global demand for PM jewelry. Never heard about the link weight.
DeleteI used ounce and fractions they used another standard similar to grams but it was known and accepted .
DeleteI wonder if they were using Imperial or their own traditional units. And what they are using now. It would be nice if more people resisted that damn metric system. I've heard the Japanese are moving away from metric back to their traditional, at least in some instances like the building trades.
DeleteI find the combination of non-tenth fractions and metric funny. One and two-thirds centimeters!
DeleteOkay, I had to think about that one for a bit. :)
DeleteWhen she was my girlfriend my wife told me she doesn't do jewelry and I breathed a sigh of relief. She wore her wedding ring until about 10 years ago and stopped cause her fingers got skinnier and the ring wandering around was bothersome. I wore my high school ring until I saw a friend get victimized by ring avulsion (look up google images) in about 1976 and never wore one since nor do I wear watches, necklaces, bracelets or any of that distracting and dangerous gurly gimmickery. People that openly broadcast their miniscule wealth with jewelry make themselves targets for thugs. My "jewelry" is clipped to the inside of my right front pants pocket ready to go to work.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. That is a consideration. Dammit! Puking on my parade! :)
DeleteStill a good idea James.
DeleteI like articles that float real ideas to deal with big picture. Micro things we can do to deal with the Macro.
S. Fla
Good-sometimes I think I do too much "macro". Other times, I wonder who else is doing it.
DeleteI wore a wedding ring for a while in my 20's, until a coworker jumping down from a stakebed lost a finger from a ring. I still have the ring & all of my fingers. Coins, not jewelry; because compact portable wealth (except for babies - the most expensive thing you will ever buy!) is not for showing.
DeleteBabies are like houses. You might think they are valuable, but they are just a money pit consumable item.
DeleteI have chopped wood all of my life. I recently found the Fiskars wedge style axes. They have a rigid, hollow fiberglass handle, and an interesting head shape, allowing full power strikes with the splitting power of a maul. They are the best axes I have ever used, and practically all I now use.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to check those out. So, either longevity with all steel handle, or better design for less energy used. Not an easy decision. Thank you.
Delete