This month marks ten years that we’ve lived continuously outside the US (this time ;-). That means ten years since we’ve received junk mail or catalogs* in our physical mailbox. In 2016, I mailed one letter and we received perhaps five. Though we maintain a physical address in the US and have a couple of phone numbers, this is what comes up (without paying) through internet sleuthing:

Another site offers this:

And while we still have a business in the US, we have no utility bills in our names going to an address there. Seeing the way things are going with financial institutions, this could become a problem at some point.

But hey, we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. Meanwhile it’s lovely to be obscure.

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* do they still exist?

Yes, I’m an American. No, I didn’t vote in 2016. Or 2012. Or 2008. I honestly don’t remember about 2004, the year both major candidates were related, and belonged the small and secretive Skull and Bones cult at Yale. That might be when I decided to call it quits. Also, there was the “convenient” discrediting of paper ballets in the 2000 election, which allowed easily-rigged electronic voting machines to take over.

After 9-11 (which my wife called as an inside job before the second WTC building [of several, not just two] disappeared, causing our  part-time-police cleaning lady to walk out of our house, never to return), I began looking to alternative sources of information. Some sites were misleading, some bogus, some with unstated agendas, but a picture began to emerge: the official story was obviously a lie,¹ and the mainstream media, 90% of which is owned by six corporations,²  was spouting that lie. Over and over.

So as the world reeled in shock yesterday at the US election results, I was shocked, too, to realize how many people still consider mainstream media a reliable source of information.

They reeled in shock because ‘everyone knew’ that the candidate whose supporters filled stadiums, sometimes several in one day, didn’t have a chance against the candidate that couldn’t fill a high school gym. And how, pray tell, did ‘everyone know’ that? Glad you asked:

(24 October 2016)

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So the real election question: will you continue to regard these people as ‘experts who somehow got it wrong’ and accept their crocodile tear ‘apologies’ as genuine, or will you begin to see them for what they are, people paid to lie to you?

This is not a political question. It is more important than that.

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¹ the truth remains elusive, but an evidence (not hypothesis) based investigation yields fascinating results
² based on comments from people from and in various countries, this lack of media diversity is not just in the US

We have a casita (little house), currently unoccupied and predictably filled with all the stuff we don’t want somewhere else. Recently my wife suggested removing a piece of furniture, so I gathered what little was in it, including a couple in inexplicably filthy USD 1 bills our son had left behind.

So I washed them with soap and water.

It didn’t really help.

Wednesday, 8:30 AM. A block from the beach. No one anywhere nearby.