How in the hell does a responsible blogger respond properly to comments? I sure dunno. I have mostly refrained from adding my comments under my commenters' comments because, how do you know if a commenter will come back to see if you have responded to their remarks? Also.....to be honest, it is too much trouble and trouble-making....if I only answer certain comments - that shows favoritism.....and if I have to answer each and every....well, I don't always have the strength, the time or the inspiration. Yet, certain comments do cry out for a response......like some recent ones remarking on the fact that, since I have stated that I hate selling,how could I be tripping the light fantastic and having so much fun as a seller of them there Stock Options I wrote about a few blogs back?
Well, my dears, I understand your puzzlement, but I assure you I did not lie. If I had to go door to door to sell the options like I did with the Liberty Magazines my Pappy sent me out with, and confront my buyers face to face, my new career would have died before it was even born.
I feel compelled to explain that the electronics age and the Options System in no way involve me with live people of any kind.....(to GTChristie....no, not even Stock Brokers.) It is just anonymous Me and my trusty computer flinging Buy/Sell Tickets into cyberspace. Somehow by some miracle they they fall into the correct slot at Scottrade (my Brokerless Brokerage House) and are forwarded electronically to the Option Pits on Wall Street by some magic or other. I do believe there are live people there making all sorts of esoteric and possibly obscene gestures signalling "buy" and "sell" processing orders....maybe mine.....but that is so far removed from my world as to be a totally different and parallel universe.
Neither the buyer nor the seller have any faces in this little drama so I do not have to feel any guilt about the fact that I may be taking money from a misguided human being somewhere on the planet (yes, this could even be a trader in, say, Iran or North Korea) who has been electronically assigned to participate in my transaction. (And, by the same token that person need feel no guilt if the trade goes against me and I have to give the money back or sell my stock to them as part of the bargain. No brokers, no victims, no defrauded widows or orphans and no gloating triumphant Wall Street Sleasebags.............it is all so clean, nay, antiseptic that no one ever dirties a pinkie. Can you believe?
If I think about it too much I am not sure if I can believe, but this is what makes it possible for me to be a seller of Options with such gay abandon. Is that now perfectly clear? I certainly hope so.
That is really all I wanted to clarify right now......Wednesdays (today is one of those) and Sundays are odd days for me. My trusty Flo is off on these days and that means I am on my own, at the mercy of brutish cats, hummingbirds, squirrels and the occasional naggy mourning dove. Stinky litter boxes cry out to be cleaned. whereas, when I cry out for my breakfast or morning meds no one answers or provides me with anything. It is only my grim satisfaction in being able to still take care of these things if necessary that makes these days bearable. I sometimes think I may have been better off before the age of 82, when the broken hip forced me to discover that being able to do everything for ones' self is not all it's cracked up to be and that, deep down in my soul, I had always wanted to be waited on hand and foot.
Well, the honest truth is I haven't quite managed to achieve that.....in fact most of yesterday I found myself chopping veggies and stirring huge cauldrons of stuff making Florence a gallon or two of her favorite Lentil Vegetable Soup. Sigh. My dreams of having gourmet meals prepared for me have been dashed. Florence is no cook..........sob. However, she is great at washing up.
Ya' takes whatcha can get, I guess.
The New Yorker covers: September 26, 2011
3 hours ago
