Business Acumen

 

These are weird times. Game Stop stock is a good example.  Bitcoin is another.  I don't understand any of it, really.  The N.Y. Times tried to explain what a hedge fund manager does this morning.  I'm sure they did, but it just sailed over my head.  Money is a game I don't understand very well at all.  I am not a corporate guy.  I always lose quickly at the gaming tables.  I guess that is just a part of my charm.  

So. . . how to explain the unveiling of all the great new digital cameras by Fuji, Sony, etc.?  There have never been cameras so great.  I want them all.  Not some of them--all of them.  Q said, sure, you would be a fool not to buy them.  They are a great investment.  You can never go wrong buying digital cameras.  Of course he was being sarcastic, but neither of us are reasonable fellows (though of late he sounds like a broker when we talk about money).  Eventually, we will break and buy something outlandish and big.  What else is there to do in this meager life?  

For much of the pandemic, I carried cameras on my daily walk, a different one each day, each time taking a different focal length lens.  It was a good exercise.  I learned much, though I can't say I made any good pictures.  Recently, I've not had much interest in carrying a camera.  I walk the same streets, take the same pictures, and finally I am bored with it.  I never take my phone with me, either.  I am not so much a phone guy.  I forget to take it with me when I leave the house often.  But the other day I took it on my walk because it has a Health-O-Meter function that tells you how far you have walked.  It is fascinating, really.  And I have learned that it tells you much more than that.  It tells you how many floors you have climbed, of course, but now, I learn, it tells you the speed you have travelled over a given distance, how long you stood with both feet on the ground, and the variation in the length of your strides from one let to the other. This last measure can be most disturbing as many mental and physical health issues can be measured by stride.  Alzheimer's patients, for instance, wobble considerably when they walk if asked to count backwards from 100.  My knee has been killing me from what I predict is a torn meniscus, so my stride turned out to be uneven.  Surely it is the knee, right?  Some of these measurements, given the imprecise nature of their cause, should be banned.  Today I will try counting backwards when I walk just to check.  

Anyway (my mother's favorite prologue to a coming statement), I had my phone and not a camera, and I decided to take photos using my Hipstamatic program.  The thing is just damn fun.  It can be complicated getting the filters and the "lenses" and the "films" set up to give you the effect you desire, but mistakes can be productive, too.  I took the picture above with the Hipstamatic, and I like it as much as anything I took all pandemic.   Why do I need an expensive camera when I can do this with my phone?  

As a result of people using their cell phones as cameras in recent years, camera sales have fallen drastically--by 54% in 2020 alone.  So now, when people are not buying cameras, camera companies are bringing out all of their new models.  

Like I say, my business acumen is in the negative numbers.  

Biden: Week 1.  I'd give him a big thumbs up.  The boy's got balls.  I'm not saying any of it is going to work or going to last, but Biden is trying to deliver on a slough of promises.  I'll give him that.  The New Green Deal stuff is thrilling.  And he's paying attention to the Covid crisis.  There are other things I don't agree with, but he has had the courage of his convictions.  Well. . . I guess you could say the same for Trump.  But I know which side of the line I fall on.  

I got up very early this morning, five o'clock.  When I walked into the kitchen, the death smell had abated.  Now, however, it has come back with a vengeance.  WTF?  Surely this has to be the last day of it.  I am cursed. 

I think I'll go back to bed.  I have an appointment with the surgeon late this afternoon and it is giving me a lot of anxiety.  You know what they say?  When you go to the barber, you get a haircut.  I'm hoping its a good one.