The death spiral for malls in the U.S. continues. Ever since
online
buying took root it was inevitable that expensive to inhabit, own and
run shopping malls would fall out of fashion. Very few malls are built
in the U.S. now, and m any of them are sparsely attended by shoppers,
who prefer the click and buy procedure of online purchases. With more
retail sellers having trouble making profit and shuttering their
stores across the U.S., some mall property owners and managers are
trying to unload weak malls at a faster pace.
Irony of irony! The quickest and easiest way to do that, it turns out,
is to sell their malls online.
The Wall Street Journal has reported on this phenomenon and one sale
example is typical.
In July, Midway Mall in Elyria, Ohio, was sold for $4.5 million by an
online auction hosted by online real estate transaction marketplace. A
privately owned real estate investment and management firm named Namdar
Realty Group purchased the single story, 585,606-square-foot mall for
$8 a square foot, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. The
mall, built in 1965, was foreclosed on last year. It's a great price
for a building of that size. No doubt some corporation will scoop up
the mall and use it as a head quarter for their business.
Online auctions for properties like malls have evolved over the past
five years. They have become more mainstream. In 2015 a total of 38
malls were closed and sold online. In 2016 it was a total of 68 malls
were sold. What happens to the malls when sold? The answer is just
about everything. Some become corporate offices, others change shopping
areas into something that are based on a specific purpose, food for
example. Where previously a mall was for shopping and food was to
support customers' ability to stay in the mall longer, by turning that
idea on its head, food selling is all those malls do now.
Others change their physical attractiveness, making stores inside face
outward to the street with doors. That's supposed to make the former
mall more fuzzy and attractive to shoppers in order to attract ore of
them. The most radical mall makeover is to tear the down and build a
city like environment that includes streets, stores and apartments. The
shopping is built around the residents apartments who live there. In
the end, the internet is killing another cultural habit, shopping at a
mall. For we male anti shoppers, it's not a tragic death.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
The Old Age Traansgender Life
I happened upon and watched part of a documentary on TV last
night
about a transgender beauty pageant in Thailand, I think it was called
the Miss International Queen contest. It was interesting to see so many
men who transition into beautiful women. Their stories told in the
documentary were sometimes heart wrenching and at others hard to
figure. But in every case there seemed to be an anxiety and insecurity,
well deserved in a world that is mostly hostile to sex changes. To show
the world is right the winner was from Thailand.
What I wondered when watching is what would life be like for those transgender contestants when they were old and did not have their beauty as a defense for their uncomfortable position in life as humans who were so uncomfortable as males that they felt the need to become women. As an old man I know life is not so easy when one ages. It must be far more difficult for the transgender person. When physical beauty gone, is the transgender person is disarmed somewhat against an often hostile world of non transgender persons?
I think one problem for old transgenders is that the society in which they life often do not provide the kind of old age programs that straight elderly people have. Too, I wonder if there is an understanding about how their body ages differently than non transgender people. I suspect they face discrimination from providers who are available to help them, making them a second in line person for social services for the aged. Do medical insurance companies and government programs exclude transgender services from their coverage? If so, then the transgender will probably not seek treatments for the common old age afflictions that, left untreated, can lead to an earlier death.
Also, what about the isolation effect? In the documentary many of the transgender contestants had boy friends or husbands who were enamored with them. But later in life when the beauty is gone, will there be more separations and divorces than in the straight old age population? Too, will they have family support? Pretty young transgenders are more equipped to handle adversity than old ones. With many family members turning against the transgender family member, there will undoubtedly be more isolation of the transgender from family than occurs in the old age population at large.
The transgender beauty pageant documentary was interesting, but I wonder if an even more interesting one would be the less sexy one on the fate of old aged transgenders. It's a subject that I have not seen addressed in the media.
What I wondered when watching is what would life be like for those transgender contestants when they were old and did not have their beauty as a defense for their uncomfortable position in life as humans who were so uncomfortable as males that they felt the need to become women. As an old man I know life is not so easy when one ages. It must be far more difficult for the transgender person. When physical beauty gone, is the transgender person is disarmed somewhat against an often hostile world of non transgender persons?
I think one problem for old transgenders is that the society in which they life often do not provide the kind of old age programs that straight elderly people have. Too, I wonder if there is an understanding about how their body ages differently than non transgender people. I suspect they face discrimination from providers who are available to help them, making them a second in line person for social services for the aged. Do medical insurance companies and government programs exclude transgender services from their coverage? If so, then the transgender will probably not seek treatments for the common old age afflictions that, left untreated, can lead to an earlier death.
Also, what about the isolation effect? In the documentary many of the transgender contestants had boy friends or husbands who were enamored with them. But later in life when the beauty is gone, will there be more separations and divorces than in the straight old age population? Too, will they have family support? Pretty young transgenders are more equipped to handle adversity than old ones. With many family members turning against the transgender family member, there will undoubtedly be more isolation of the transgender from family than occurs in the old age population at large.
The transgender beauty pageant documentary was interesting, but I wonder if an even more interesting one would be the less sexy one on the fate of old aged transgenders. It's a subject that I have not seen addressed in the media.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
From English To Spanlish
I'm having a harder time understanding English these days. I am not
sure if it is my own fault, given my advancing age and unwillingness to
pay even the slightest attention to what is new trendy or part of the
popular culture. I know a language always changes, but isn't it
supposed to be a slow and natural change? When I hear some people
speak or read what they write I have "duh" moments. New vocabulary,
weird usage and context, slang and more confuse me.
There has always been a youth culture that is crime in changing vocabulary of a language, but now we have establishment types, particularly liberals who change language that doesn't fit their agenda. Also, business and technology have created a kind of language all its own. The mediums also produce rapid changes in language with their blending of technology with established communication mediums. All languages change, but the speed of the change varies greatly due to uniformity of political control. We seem to have little political control today.
The English language today is changing faster today also because of those cell phones and because of social media. Both give people a chance to communicate away from the rest of society, to ignore the rules and vocabulary of it, and to create their own language on those platforms. I can't keep up with it because old people like me learn some of that new English, the language transforms more and leaves me more in the dark. Twitter is a bizarre world for me.
Strangest of all is the new "picture" English, those emoticons defined by the smiley face, that so many have decided is better than the spoken or written word. How does one interpret a smiley face without the context of a sentence or the c voice to give contextual cues? Didn't cave men communicate with pictures like that? Oh well, I supposed it's for the best. I might retreat to a cave if this new English confounds me more in the future.
There has always been a youth culture that is crime in changing vocabulary of a language, but now we have establishment types, particularly liberals who change language that doesn't fit their agenda. Also, business and technology have created a kind of language all its own. The mediums also produce rapid changes in language with their blending of technology with established communication mediums. All languages change, but the speed of the change varies greatly due to uniformity of political control. We seem to have little political control today.
The English language today is changing faster today also because of those cell phones and because of social media. Both give people a chance to communicate away from the rest of society, to ignore the rules and vocabulary of it, and to create their own language on those platforms. I can't keep up with it because old people like me learn some of that new English, the language transforms more and leaves me more in the dark. Twitter is a bizarre world for me.
Strangest of all is the new "picture" English, those emoticons defined by the smiley face, that so many have decided is better than the spoken or written word. How does one interpret a smiley face without the context of a sentence or the c voice to give contextual cues? Didn't cave men communicate with pictures like that? Oh well, I supposed it's for the best. I might retreat to a cave if this new English confounds me more in the future.
Monday, November 27, 2017
Old Things Are Better
I like old things and have many antiques (not counting me)
in my home
that I have never had a desire to change for modern furnishings. When
those young brats snicker about their parents having a house filled
with family furnishing that "looks like granny's" I simply smile and
comment on their IKEA fashion style and am amused at the thought that
their furniture ( IKEA style of cheap plastic and particle broad
origin) will be worth little 250 or a hundred years from now, if it
even exists then. There is a reason people treasure old things when
they are older. Not only is it that they like the familiarity, but they
see from experience it is better quality and more interesting than mass
produced furnishings.
I like furnishings that have an aesthetic appeal that is unrelated to time, to what is fashionable today. Today's mass produced furniture is often like the Nehru jacket or leisure suit of my youth-- laughable. Some people believe that an object’s aesthetic value is a matter of personal taste. They are wrong. It must have universal appeal separate from time. Some pieces of art and furniture have almost universal aesthetic appeal. You know right away that they have the "it" factor. Just go to a museum an look for awhile and you'll understand that.
Another thing that I like about older things is the rarity factor. If fewer were made (which is likely before machine made mass production made things more affordable, if also more ugly) and fewer still exist, I am likely to be attracted to it. Also, if it is of uncommon style or shape and has not been copied so much that it has been cheapened by imitation, I'll probably like it.
But really, for me it is the craftsmanship that appeals to me. When I see a well formed old furnishing my imagination takes me to that time, to the person I imagine made it and to those who I imagine loved it in their own home. It connects me to the past in this current age in which the past is seen as annoying or irrelevant. It lets me thumb my nose at the IKEA generation and all the crassness that it represents. It assures me that humans are capable of better than cell phones and other electronic time wasting garbage that so many find dear
I like furnishings that have an aesthetic appeal that is unrelated to time, to what is fashionable today. Today's mass produced furniture is often like the Nehru jacket or leisure suit of my youth-- laughable. Some people believe that an object’s aesthetic value is a matter of personal taste. They are wrong. It must have universal appeal separate from time. Some pieces of art and furniture have almost universal aesthetic appeal. You know right away that they have the "it" factor. Just go to a museum an look for awhile and you'll understand that.
Another thing that I like about older things is the rarity factor. If fewer were made (which is likely before machine made mass production made things more affordable, if also more ugly) and fewer still exist, I am likely to be attracted to it. Also, if it is of uncommon style or shape and has not been copied so much that it has been cheapened by imitation, I'll probably like it.
But really, for me it is the craftsmanship that appeals to me. When I see a well formed old furnishing my imagination takes me to that time, to the person I imagine made it and to those who I imagine loved it in their own home. It connects me to the past in this current age in which the past is seen as annoying or irrelevant. It lets me thumb my nose at the IKEA generation and all the crassness that it represents. It assures me that humans are capable of better than cell phones and other electronic time wasting garbage that so many find dear
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Brain Writing
The latest proposed improvement in communication
seems almost like an
episode from a futuristic science fiction film. Face book is exploring
a silent speech system with a team of more than 60 scientists that
would let people type 100 words per minute with their brain. Yep! They
want the brain to type instead of the hands or voice. Good luck to them
in getting my brain to even wake up. It's asleep most of the time.
Supposedly, the technology is almost ready and in a few years could be tested on those who are paralyzed and can not speak or move their hands. This is legit. Face book is working with scientists, engineers and system integrators from UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who specialize in machine learning methods for decoding speech and language.
Already Face book knows too much about us. I am not sure if many people want them to read our brains and types what we are thinking. Face book is not alone in trying to merge the brain with its technology to do...whatever it is they want. Just think if we could read what a person is thinking. I propose that all politicians be hooked up to those machines so we can finally know how much they are lying to us. But I am not sure I want Hillary Clinton hooked up. The number of lies coming from her might destroy what little brain matter she has left. And Donald Trump's brain would confuse any truth verification system because it would change its mind every few minutes.
The bigger and more serious question is why we would want to do this? Is it not better to leave technology out of such things? Is the benefit for most of us less than the cost? I wonder if we are a technologically mad. Has technology become God to some? Sometimes human limitation is better than human excess. Not being able to do something is better than being able to do miraculous things that hurt others. What's next? Maybe a machine that wipes our butts and laughs and smiles for us?
Supposedly, the technology is almost ready and in a few years could be tested on those who are paralyzed and can not speak or move their hands. This is legit. Face book is working with scientists, engineers and system integrators from UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who specialize in machine learning methods for decoding speech and language.
Already Face book knows too much about us. I am not sure if many people want them to read our brains and types what we are thinking. Face book is not alone in trying to merge the brain with its technology to do...whatever it is they want. Just think if we could read what a person is thinking. I propose that all politicians be hooked up to those machines so we can finally know how much they are lying to us. But I am not sure I want Hillary Clinton hooked up. The number of lies coming from her might destroy what little brain matter she has left. And Donald Trump's brain would confuse any truth verification system because it would change its mind every few minutes.
The bigger and more serious question is why we would want to do this? Is it not better to leave technology out of such things? Is the benefit for most of us less than the cost? I wonder if we are a technologically mad. Has technology become God to some? Sometimes human limitation is better than human excess. Not being able to do something is better than being able to do miraculous things that hurt others. What's next? Maybe a machine that wipes our butts and laughs and smiles for us?
Saturday, November 25, 2017
Bath Time
I read a story (odd one that must have been a slow news day
and it was used as
a filler) in my newspaper about bathing, more specifically what would
happen to a person who did not bathe or shower for one year. In past
times bathing was rare, particularly in the west. Most bathing was
public and very infrequent. But today were are "enlightened" and
cleaner. What if a person today stopped bathing regularly, or even for
a solid year? Dermatologists were consulted about this no baths for a year thing, and they gave a typical scenario for not bathing. Actually,
it's more obvious what would happen to the uncleaned one than the more
perplexing question of , "Why would anyone not bathe for a year"?
According the the experts, here's what would happen.
First you would smell from both the bacteria and the dead skins that sits on your carcass. After a year you'd have a build-up of that "skin stratum corneum" (that's the dead skin on top of your skin. Next your skin would become oily or dry and become infected with fungus or yeast and then bacteria. The dirt on the skin could then cause warty growths, particularly on your underarms, behind the ears, on the neck and under a woman's breasts. The body's dead skin normally rises to the surface and is flaked off through normal washing, When that stops, the dead skin clumps together with your body's oils. The clumps would grow in patches and take on a brown hue once they collect dirt and other pollutants.
Ugh.... let me be less specific with some of the other non bathing effects, because this is disgusting enough. Next, you'd get infections and become very itchy (like from the dandruff we fight from time to time) and you would get acne and puss bumps on your body. The experts also say your "groin area' would be impacted greatly, getting itchy and red to burning and painful. No Saturday night dates for you! Among the other things that would happen is to develop scum between your toes (toe cheese, personified) and after all this when you would finally be motivated to take a bat, it would take weeks for you to return to normal hygiene.
Wow! It's pretty grim but no psychologically stable person would not bathe for a year. What about mom saying that if you don't bathe every day you'll turn into pigpen from Peanuts? The dermatologists say that showering every day is unnecessary. Mom lied to us! Every two, three or even four days is supposedly acceptable as long as you don't stink up the place. Generally, the organisms naturally found on her skin protect us from picking up harmful germs for a couple of days......Unless you are a person with fragile immune systems( newborns, the elderly and people suffering from cancer etc.) you better turn on your bath water tonight.
First you would smell from both the bacteria and the dead skins that sits on your carcass. After a year you'd have a build-up of that "skin stratum corneum" (that's the dead skin on top of your skin. Next your skin would become oily or dry and become infected with fungus or yeast and then bacteria. The dirt on the skin could then cause warty growths, particularly on your underarms, behind the ears, on the neck and under a woman's breasts. The body's dead skin normally rises to the surface and is flaked off through normal washing, When that stops, the dead skin clumps together with your body's oils. The clumps would grow in patches and take on a brown hue once they collect dirt and other pollutants.
Ugh.... let me be less specific with some of the other non bathing effects, because this is disgusting enough. Next, you'd get infections and become very itchy (like from the dandruff we fight from time to time) and you would get acne and puss bumps on your body. The experts also say your "groin area' would be impacted greatly, getting itchy and red to burning and painful. No Saturday night dates for you! Among the other things that would happen is to develop scum between your toes (toe cheese, personified) and after all this when you would finally be motivated to take a bat, it would take weeks for you to return to normal hygiene.
Wow! It's pretty grim but no psychologically stable person would not bathe for a year. What about mom saying that if you don't bathe every day you'll turn into pigpen from Peanuts? The dermatologists say that showering every day is unnecessary. Mom lied to us! Every two, three or even four days is supposedly acceptable as long as you don't stink up the place. Generally, the organisms naturally found on her skin protect us from picking up harmful germs for a couple of days......Unless you are a person with fragile immune systems( newborns, the elderly and people suffering from cancer etc.) you better turn on your bath water tonight.
Friday, November 24, 2017
Favorite Christmas Movies
Christmas is about overkill. Everything tied to the holiday
is overdone, but I love it. What a catharsis Christmas can be. We do
benefit when we step out of what is normal and pretend a bit. At
Christmas there is a great way to escape the humdrum of life. Its the
Christmas movie. There are more Christmas movies than one can imagine.
Many are sappy, most are formula, but some are enthralling to watch.
There is even a TV channel in the U.S. that runs Christmas movies non
stop, 24 hours a day every day in November and December.
Forget the bad ones, the too predictable or familiar ones. Today I will give you a few recommendations for best Christmas movies to watch this holiday season. Most of them are older films, made in a more innocent age. Innocent ages produce good innocent films, as in the Christmas genre. One of the best is the showcase of Irving Berlin songs called, Holiday Inn. It's a classic 1942 film that is not dated. Those who love music will love the songs and elaborate dance numbers of Holiday Inn. On of the greatest Christmas crooners of all time, Bing Crosby is one of the stars of Holiday Inn. Holiday Inn was so good that 12 years later another Christmas movie based on Irving Berlin songs, 'White Christmas,' was made. That one is also a classic Christmas musical.
Who can forget James Stewart's portrayal of George Bailey in 'It's A Wonderful Life'? The movie was a low budget flop at the box office, but its themes of caring, thoughtfulness and sacrifice, along with the George's silly guardian angel, touches the heart and soul of everyone. Most critics consider It's A Wonderful Life the best Christmas movie of all time But 'Miracle on 34th Street' (1947) is another classic, a cute story of a small child who learns that there is a Santa Claus and that the real Santa is far better than the abstraction we hear about every Christmas season.
The Charles Dickens classic Christmas story, Scrooge has been made into a movie countless times, but the best adaptation of Charles Dickens' legendary tale is the black and white 1951 feature about nasty miser Ebenezer Scrooge. Alastair Sim is the perfect Scrooge who's visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future and learns it's never too late to stop behaving like Hillary Clinton and to stop Bah Humbugging life.
If you hate Christmas and all the traditions with it, especially that fat guy in the Santa suit, there is also a Christmas film for you. It's Billy Bob Thornton's drunken Santa Claus, a thieving department store Santa he is with a crazy elf sidekick. It's Nasty deviancy into the Yuletide season for Christmas haters and everybody who likes to laugh.
Then there are the animated Christmas cartoons. Try the 1965 'It's a Charlie Brown Christmas', which brings to life the great Charles Schultz 'Peanuts' comic strip characters, the 1965 island of misfit toys in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer' with Burl Ives singing badly off key but in an enchanting way. But my favorite Christmas animated cartoon is the Boris Karloff narrated (Yes, the Frankenstein guy) animated special 'The Grinch That Stole Christmas'. It's a great adaptation of the Dr. Seuss fable about a cave dwelling sourpuss grinch trying to ruin the holidays for all the Who people who live down the mountain in Whoville.
There are so many more great Christmas films, but I leave you with the campiest and most amusing of all, the 1964 'Santa Claus Captues the Martians'. Here's the premise....Martian children complain about not celebrating Christmas. So their parents do what any self-respecting extraterrestrials would. They kidnap the jolly old elf. This is so bad it's great. I suspect it is the Christmas season's campiest classic. As they say on Mars, Ho Ho Ho to all the Christmas movie favorites..
Forget the bad ones, the too predictable or familiar ones. Today I will give you a few recommendations for best Christmas movies to watch this holiday season. Most of them are older films, made in a more innocent age. Innocent ages produce good innocent films, as in the Christmas genre. One of the best is the showcase of Irving Berlin songs called, Holiday Inn. It's a classic 1942 film that is not dated. Those who love music will love the songs and elaborate dance numbers of Holiday Inn. On of the greatest Christmas crooners of all time, Bing Crosby is one of the stars of Holiday Inn. Holiday Inn was so good that 12 years later another Christmas movie based on Irving Berlin songs, 'White Christmas,' was made. That one is also a classic Christmas musical.
Who can forget James Stewart's portrayal of George Bailey in 'It's A Wonderful Life'? The movie was a low budget flop at the box office, but its themes of caring, thoughtfulness and sacrifice, along with the George's silly guardian angel, touches the heart and soul of everyone. Most critics consider It's A Wonderful Life the best Christmas movie of all time But 'Miracle on 34th Street' (1947) is another classic, a cute story of a small child who learns that there is a Santa Claus and that the real Santa is far better than the abstraction we hear about every Christmas season.
The Charles Dickens classic Christmas story, Scrooge has been made into a movie countless times, but the best adaptation of Charles Dickens' legendary tale is the black and white 1951 feature about nasty miser Ebenezer Scrooge. Alastair Sim is the perfect Scrooge who's visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future and learns it's never too late to stop behaving like Hillary Clinton and to stop Bah Humbugging life.
If you hate Christmas and all the traditions with it, especially that fat guy in the Santa suit, there is also a Christmas film for you. It's Billy Bob Thornton's drunken Santa Claus, a thieving department store Santa he is with a crazy elf sidekick. It's Nasty deviancy into the Yuletide season for Christmas haters and everybody who likes to laugh.
Then there are the animated Christmas cartoons. Try the 1965 'It's a Charlie Brown Christmas', which brings to life the great Charles Schultz 'Peanuts' comic strip characters, the 1965 island of misfit toys in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer' with Burl Ives singing badly off key but in an enchanting way. But my favorite Christmas animated cartoon is the Boris Karloff narrated (Yes, the Frankenstein guy) animated special 'The Grinch That Stole Christmas'. It's a great adaptation of the Dr. Seuss fable about a cave dwelling sourpuss grinch trying to ruin the holidays for all the Who people who live down the mountain in Whoville.
There are so many more great Christmas films, but I leave you with the campiest and most amusing of all, the 1964 'Santa Claus Captues the Martians'. Here's the premise....Martian children complain about not celebrating Christmas. So their parents do what any self-respecting extraterrestrials would. They kidnap the jolly old elf. This is so bad it's great. I suspect it is the Christmas season's campiest classic. As they say on Mars, Ho Ho Ho to all the Christmas movie favorites..
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