Day: April 21, 2026

Way back in 1984 I spent $6000 on a high end, high powered “exotic” stereo system, comprised of two tower speakers, pre-amp, amplifier and tuner, and have enjoyed it immensely all these years. Over the years I blew out the woofers and one midrange. The woofers only needed cone replacements but the midrange was toast and a long search ensued for as close to exact a replacement I could find. All this was done about 18 years ago and of course I continued to use the sound system.

Now it’s all 42 years old and those very expensive speakers are sounding kinda tired, so I purchased a high-end pair of Klipsch speakers, which arrived two days ago.

But a little while ago the power amplifier lost one channel and after trying all the fixes on Facebook and a few of my own to no avail, I started looking on ebay, and found and bought one today that’s guaranteed to be fully functional. We will see, upon it’s arrival. It’s the same model as my semi-failed amp, and also considered “Exotic” along with the other system units.

Anyway, today I hooked up the CD player to the pre-amp, the pre-amp to the one good channel left on the amp and that to one of the new speakers and Oh-My-God, was I ever right about the old speakers sounding tired. The sound is CRISP again, I can hear the tiny notes, the sharp cutoff as each one was originally played, the bass is clear again instead of the deep rumble it had become, the high notes are sharp as knives again. I love it. I absolutely love it. How much more amazing it’s going to be when the replacement amp is here and the second speaker joins in the harmony.

My only friendship here has ended, as I previously posted, but the music is renewed. This isn’t seen as a trade-off, just changes. Things always change and we have to know how to roll with them. I actually feel ebullient. Gad, how long has that been?

There’s much to be said for staying within your own purview and that which you can control, especially in old age. Life is difficult enough when we’re young.

Over 30% of the manufactured fertilizer chemicals, produced from oil, passes through the Hormuz Strait each year and it’s these artificial fertilizers that have made it possible for the human population of Earth to increase to 8 billion people. Most farming areas on our globe were depleted of most of their nutrients long ago and without the yearly addition of fresh nutrient, would be unable to produce crops sufficient to feed everyone.

Right now it’s Spring in the Western Hemisphere. It’s planting season and the fields need to be fertilized, plowed and planted. Right now is also when the availability of fertilizers is being blocked. Just saying…

Doctors are becoming more and more alarmed as they see infant mortality increasing among those whose mothers took the Covid injections. These children are dying from diseases and problems they never should have had and are showing the same spike proteins in their blood that their mothers have, even though they never got the shots. Just saying…

NATO seems to be disintegrating. If it does, then when a NATO member, or I should say former NATO member gets attacked by, say, China or Russia, no one will come to their aid. In other words, if NATO goes, the primary impediment to making war on a smaller nation no longer exists, so why not do it? Just saying…

Africa reached it’s maximum sustainable population many decades ago. Anyone remember Kwashiorkor babies? That’s when infants turn into skeletons with bloated stomachs because the people don’t stop making babies even though there’s already too many of them for the available food supply. So there was this massive famine in Ethiopia, over a million people died of starvation, mostly women and children because of a drought that severely limited harvests. That was just Ethiopia and a lack of rain. Now let’s think about just this one year, 2026 and the fall harvest ahead, and a global lack of soil nutrients. What if there’s a drought, too? A global drought? Just saying…

Google says: “Early 2026 reports already indicate significant droughts in the US Southeast, parts of South America, and East Africa.” I don’t know about “parts of South America” but East Africa is the most populous part of the continent, so it looks like Ethiopia may be in for it again. The US Southeast is a massive food producer that includes 60% of the total U.S. agricultural export volume. The USA is still the breadbasket of the world. Just saying…

Of course, all of this is no doubt completely coincidental…

This was the punch line for a cartoon in Playboy Magazine that appeared sometime in the 1960’s, by Gahan Wilson. The cartoon was of a little naked man inside what looked like a cardboard box that was laying on it’s side with him in the open side looking out, and scowling.

There was a lot of truth to that cartoon then and nothing has changed in the 60 or so years since I saw it. What brings me to think of this now is that the very last friend I had is now gone, not by dying, just by abandonment.

I’ve been watching the changes in attitude toward me as the effects of my aging become more prominent. My hearing is degrading along with my eyesight and physical strength and the wrinkles are steadily increasing. The only thing that isn’t slowly failing me is my brain. The rest is going where aging takes it. I’m not a different person, I’m still the same guy, I just don’t look like it the way I used to, I have to wear a hearing aid in public now if I want to hear what a waitress or clerk is saying and I need reading glasses to read menus, receipts and so forth.

My friend, though 34 years younger than me, is aging faster than I am, probably from getting a couple of those Covid poison injections, so maybe it’s just fear of aging that I’m too much of a reminder of. In any case, the more I’ve aged, the less interest or respect for my friendship has been shown me and it’s plainly gone beyond repair.

I think the only real lesson to take from this is that we should be grateful for the good times. Like everything else in life, they don’t last. If we hang on to that which is no longer there, we keep ourselves from moving on to new good times. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my Philosophy Hint For Today.