In the past year or so I only had to work 4 days a week to be considered full time and I was on track to only having to work 3 days a week to "make it".

I had had plenty of extra time to do these newsletters and other blogging type writing.

Within the past month my employer informed me that I had to go back to working 5 days a week if I wanted to keep my full time status.

I am not yet ready for part time working--economically speaking. (Though I could go part time and "make it" it is complicated, but, long story short: in the particular big box store company I work for and the particular American Culture I presently am in, full-time means I own the job whereas part time means "they" own it.  So by not yet being ready for part time means even though my job is closer to the bottom of the food chain than the top I still am not yet ready to give up ownership of it.  Getting close but not yet there.)

Since I am determined to not take any credit card type debt into full retirement I am trying to like the forced opportunity to earn some "extra" money to help me achieve this goal sooner rather than later.  (Peersonal note here to my big--wonderful--sister: in spite of you saying I don't have to I still plan to pay you back that 5k you borrowed me a few years back to help me "make it" and I'll do it 500 bucks at a time and you'll know I've started when at some point over the next 6 months you'll get a check for same with 1 of 10 written on the memo line. For the total payback time line see the next paragraph.)

Since this shedding of all credit card type debt will take me the better part of two to two and a half more years to achieve and since I was born in 1945 on the leading edge of the baby boomers, I suspect you could plot the nation's economic recovery to parallel mine: one more tough year and then steady increase in getting better and better--which to me-
-at my 65 going on age 66, better--means more not less but more time off. (I plan to be working only three days per week or possibly even just two before the clock strikes 12 more months from now--that is, if the wages of the sin of failing to save enough for retirement is having to work longer, then so be it;  a couple of days a week ain't all bad--of course it ain't all good either--but what the hey what'd Ayn Rand say? ... oh, I remember: Reality ALWAYS has the final say.)

But I wouldn't necessarily invest money based on the comparison to my predicted economic recovery for me personally:  the market still struggles to avoid a double dip and since I still think such a dip is possible per my Chart 5 and the fact that the end of QE 2 is rattling the markets as I predicted I still am not admitting defeat here in my Chart 5 prediction (reference my last newsletter for more).

The topic of this (June 2011) Newsletter was going to be:  if evil is the worst kind of bad, what is the best kind of good?

This topic for me was prompted by the recent trial and conviction of another evil murdering thug wearing human clothing and going by the name Michael Swanson--the teenage kid from my home state of Minnesota who fantasized being a murderer, rapist and cannibalist and "achieved" one of his goals by murdering two female convenience store clerks in Iowa last fall.

I suppose I could have chosen to write about the need to bring back the death penalty but it is too much work for me to do at this time--as I've already explained.

So since evil is the worst kind of bad and "we" have written about evil on no fewer than two separate occasions--see my lte/commentary "Killer Kids" article and my June 2007 NL:  Summer fun interrupted by VA Tech Killer, I am suffering from been-there-done-that syndrome and am not motivated enough to write another.

That is, Michael Swanson is just another evil person that should be put to death because (it appears) we can be epistemologically certain that he committed the murders (see Ayn Rand's argument against capital punishment based on her theoretical speculations about epistemological certainty and uncertainty) and if this is truly the case--that we are certain he committed the murders--then justice to the rest of the planet demands that he be executed.

But.

Like I said I don't have enough time to go fully into this.

Michael Swanson qua murderer of two Iowa women is evil, Seung-Hui Cho qua murderer of 32 VA tech students is evil, Columbine murderers of 13 people Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are evil, Jeffery Dahmer--murderer of 17 men and boys--is/was/is evil too and actually, I guess, the list can go on and on and on.

And notice we have no animals--be they gorillas, tigers or poisonous snakes--on this list so it must be that evil is only something human beings are capable of.

Could this be part of the reason why animals do not have rights--because they are metaphysically incapable of evil?

But we digress.

Even though the best kind of good is moral perfection (with moral in this context understood to mean multiple so that it isn't viewed here as redundant) the best kind of good isn't necessarily the ultimate kind of good (reference my "Father-to-Son" letter reprinted in my June 2010 newsletter).  That--the ultimate kind of good--is ... something else ... to be dealt with at a later date in these newsletters or some future book of mine or both.

Looking forward to more time off to do more of the things I want to do and so ... until and unless ... well, that's a big fat

tbd.

...........................

PS

If I don't die before the day is over--as I am want now qua sexagenarian to say every morning when I wake up--I plan to live to be at least 106.83 (my oldest parent's age--my mother's--at death plus 10 years)--or that is, I hope Medicare will--when the time comes--cover my bionic organ replacement therapy costs.  If not then maybe I'll have to go back to work even longer to afford such a grand possibility and if so then I'll restart my Selfishness Training Institute because if I have-to-work-forever it has to be doing something I love or could love not something I have-to-do to just get by so that I can view myself as the patron of my own arts.  (Again, discounting the much much more over the years than just the 5k help mentioned above from my big sister who--as it turns out now that I think about it, who--did more for me than BIG BROTHER Government BM's so my new motto going forward will be: ask not what your BBBM Government can do "for" you (steal all your excess money and try and make you feel warm and fuzzy because you are a morally superior self-sacrificer), rather, ask: what can you do for your Big Sister.

Ans: tbd.

(That is, beyond being my wonderful self who has brought honor to the family crest by being the only one to go to and graduate from College--even getting a Masters Degree and aspiring to a Ph. D. if, that is, he should live long enough--say to 116.83.  But, if not then maybe not.)