eBay Vintage Skateboard Gouging

For all of those who are seeing fit to list vintage skateboard items on eBay at ludicrious
prices, "But It Now, or Best Offer," please stop.  No collector or skateboard aficionado ever
will purchase your trumped up product.  You only are debasing the real art of skateboard collecting.
There is a small group who are imprudent enough to think that listing vintage skateboard gear
somehow will see fit to ascribe a value to it that simply is insane.  Please stop.  You only are harming
the once fun and diversionary sport of collecting memorabilia that somehow connects you with
a nostalgic and pleasing past.  Not any more.  If I see another board, set of trucks or wheels, or
anything listed at a ridiculous price it just makes me want to find you and.... well you know.  It's the same
with music.  What once was a reputable, artistic, and respected art form now has been debased to
nothing.  Drive integrity into the ground.  Yes, satan all ready is here once again on earth, and we just
are waiting for God to make His second appearance.  Anytime.  I have had my fill of the bullshit.  Once
collecting, assembling, and photographing vintage skateboards was fun.  Now it is a mockery.  Please
you assholes, take your trumped up shit off eBay and take a powder.  We know the value, and it is NOT
what you decide.  Your auctions are a joke, so please stop humiliating yourselves.  I have seen the same set
of non-vintage, fake, not valuable trucks for going on two years.  Please take them off eBay and rather
try sticking up your @#$%.  They would find your self ascribed value there.  Thank you.  Sincerely, Jay
Adams, Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, Lance Mountain, Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Tommy Guerro, and Moi.
Jesus, please save us from this insult.

Beleaguered Education

 

When I look backward at my life, there is one thing I know for sure. 

When I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In l985, beginning teacher’s salary was too low to lure me into such a demanding vocation.  Although both of my parents were teachers, my instincts told me taking such a low level job would be pointless.  It was beneath me.  Not only would I not make enough money to have a family, I barely would have anything upon which to live myself.  Is this why I spent four long years at a reputable university, to emerge into a job market in North Carolina that was  sub standard?  I have been able to reflect more recently about the state of North Carolina having returned for a short while.  The one thing I know for sure is, it is an embarrassment to live in such a backward state.  North Carolina under the helm of former governor Jim Hunt was a much different place.  I was afraid to ride my mini bike on the street, drive drunk for fear of a two day pass to jail, or commit a crime in general.  In the l980’s North Carolina was conservative.  Now every where I turn there is another unlicensed motor scooter, a car or truck with illegal window tinting, or blatant drag racing.  Teachers’ salaries, just as in l985, are in the top five LOWEST of all fifty states.  Ironically North Carolina state income taxes are in the top five highest of all fifty states.  Like a dinosaur the both expensive and cumbersome vehicle state inspection has lumbered on draining the taxpayers' pockets yet filling what seem to be the empty coffers of the North Carolina state government.  At least the new governor is trying to change this.

What I know for sure and have remembered clearly is North Carolina attempts to take your money.  If you don’t sign your car registration, there is a fine.  If you car’s stop engine light won’t go off so your vehicle will not pass the outdated state inspection, you had to spend at least five hundred dollars trying to get it fixed before the state will give you a waiver.  I know one thing for sure.  It is embarrassing to live in this state.  The realm of crimes being committed here would challenge any ghetto neighborhood in Watts, the Bronx, or Harlem, and the state governmental infrastructure, like our federal Congress can’t seem to solve any of the problems.  What do they do?  They spend our money.  What does President Obama do?  He and Joe Biden spend our money.  Instead of trying to create capital supporting small businesses, investing in manufacturing, and encouraging entrepreneurial thinking, government simply spends our well-earned tax money.  They spend, and spend, and spend.   Maybe it was Ronald Reagan that stopped this government spending.  One thing I know for sure is during his Trickle-Down Economics life was better.  Things were expensive, but our quality of life was high. 

Now our quality of life is a joke.  Food manufacturers, instead of trying to sell us nutritious wholesome food, have instigated a plan of deception to skim pennies off of the top of their sales.  Now you can’t buy a regular sized can of pork and beans.  You must buy the BIG one that costs three times as much.  Containers deceptively are smaller as are our ABC store liquor bottles.  You don’t get as much, and it costs more.  That the government gets HALF of what we pay for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms emphatically says, “We have no way of creating jobs, educating students, or building this country into a superpower again.”  “It says we are broke, we will still spend the money we do not have, and we will continue to do so until someone says no.”  Does that mean for our lawmakers to become competent once again there must be a revolution?  It has happened before and in many countries.  Should it happen here?  There appears to be no real alternative.  It is dismal, and embarrassing to turn on the news in North Carolina.  After having lived in George Voinovich’s state for comparison, it is like venturing to the Adirondacks.  The Hatfields and McCoys are feudin’ it out everyday.  Is to this what North Carolina has sunk?  To add insult to injury, my chosen profession of teaching has become the butt of George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind.”  All I ever have heard from colleagues about this beleaguered legislation is that it emphatically stymies effective teaching.  Now a process is in place, a plantation owner, a Hitler, or a Mussolini that demands you produce test scores.  How did Communism make it into our public education system?  This legislation must be repealed for teaching to begin again.  I look at academia, a dissertation and exam away from a doctorate degree in music, and my stomach turns.  They are saying, like North Carolina, schools would rather hire beginner or novice teachers that will work for less money.  Who needs the pinnacle degree representing wisdom beyond your years?  Who needs someone that smart?  Instead let’s begin to scorn and ostracize the academic elite.  I look back at the prospect of completing that degree and see hardship, heartache, and disappointment.  Why bother?  No one cares about education anymore.  Once it was a respected profession.  Like all of the baby boomer jobs, that generation is taken care of.  They were the last.  America abandoned Generation X, and they abandoned me.  Thinking of starting a publishing company only has me thinking of how I am going to pay Uncle Sam.  That’s what we do in America anymore.