T.G.I.F. Friday: Volume 65

Welcome to “Thank God I’m FI” Friday, Volume #65!

Here are some things I really like and that you might too.

Financial Independence/Retirement Articles

When It Is NOT Better To Give Than Receive: It Is Okay To Be Selfish (XRAYVSN) – “Should you tailor your life to set your children up financially or should you tailor it to benefit yourself?“

A 3% Chance (My Quiet FI) – “Hence, it all comes back to a single question: how much do you personally value your time?“

Video

Watch this little gazelle make the most epic “juke” move that even Barry Sanders would be proud of and fake out this lion.  Touchdown.

Who’s Inspired Me

This Dog. 

You get an extra video this week.  No matter how bleak things appear, no matter how down in the dumps you are, there’s always hope for a way out.  This dog reminded me of that.

What I’m Grateful For

That one of my closest cycling buddies finally got a mountain bike.  These damn roadies need to learn how to handle a bike in terrain, and I’m gonna teach him.

Lyrically Speaking

Please forgive me if I can’t learn to live in generic America
Where the wavy fields got paved
The kids are out looking for a rave
And the rest of us sat on our big fat ass
Watching the rose bowl parade
Oh why can’t you see, I can’t be me in your generic America
Don’t want to live vicariously, in a virtual reality
Shopping malls and prison walls all look the same to me 

From “Generic America” by Blue Mountain.

Bands like the Jayhawks and Uncle Tupelo helped spawn the “alt-country” or Americana boom that exploded in the 1990’s.  It’s called alt-country because country music really took a nosedive in the late 1980’s and became trite and boring, basically pop music with either fashion models or guys in phony cowboy hats – very few of whom even wrote their own songs.  The Americana movement carried on the real country music ethos and fused it with elements of punk and rock to become a thing all to itself.  It spawned magazines like No Depression and Paste and still has it’s own awards to this day.

Blue Mountain quickly and deservedly became one of the bigger bands in Americana.  “Generic America” is from their excellent 1997 album Homegrown.  The opening guitar riffs surely make it sound squarely like a straight up rock song, and it is.  But if you really want to know what Blue Mountain is about you must listen to their 1995 album Dog Days.  It’s one of my favorite records of all time and still a record I would put on my desert island list to this day. 

As for those lyrics, the song is basically me.  I’ve written about how I’m a freak and live very differently from 99% of Americans in so many ways.  And even in the late 1990’s when this song came on the cassette player in my car (ah those days….) I would scream out that last line, because shopping malls were prison walls to me back then.  And they still are.

Miscellaneous

Just One Extra Drink a Day Is Linked to Brain Shrinking, Study of 36,000 People Shows – “Despite the joys that may come from a boozy Friday night, alcohol is bad for us. And not just in large quantities.“

NASA opens untouched moon rock container from 50 years ago – “The agency knew science and technology would evolve and allow scientists to study the material in new ways to address new questions in the future.“

Controversial New Theory Says Human Consciousness Is … Electromagnetic? – “Could the thorny question of human consciousness be answered by simple electromagnetic waves?“