Ultimate purpose of our lives

PHILOSOPHY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

WHY are we born? What is the ultimate purpose of our lives? How can we know the purpose of our life? Why are we born at all?

Youthfulness

3.11pm local time, 33°C (91°F), too hot for comfort

How could you, when you’re acting like having died at 25 and aren’t buried until 75?

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© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2014 | Site | About.me | FB | Twitter | Policy & Legal

DocID: B14170

I wished I’d jumped out the window because it’s an easier way out…

Originally written on Sat 01 March 2014
1.03am local time
19°C (66°F), humid

IT’S BEEN a bad, bad hair day — and I didn’t know how to handle it. Bad Hair Days are not a usual fixture in my life. That’s okay because that’s what you all (ahem, all of you) want to read about anyway.

Flared nostrils

(via HealthCentral)

Dad said my problem was I couldn’t take a joke about money.

Not true. Price is what I can’t take a joke about. There IS a difference between money and price.

Money is about miserliness, and I’m no tightwad. Price is an objective unit of measure of your level of contractual obligations with respect to those who deserve no effing respect by any other measure. I know, Dad, because you were sometimes such a renegade used-car salesman flogging rusted-up cars in a rain-sodden area, and I learnt something from you.

But it does get up my nostrils (plus some other more precious orifices) when a person dicks with me about prices.

I don’t even mind unreasonable prices, since those could be made reasonable through negotiation (preferred, and cheaper to do) or a Southern Death Threat (which incidentally is also the name of a cool American rock band).

Most people get the impression that ink is the main bag for printers like me, mainly because of that phrase “Never argue with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.” Not true. Our main bag is in fact paper.

For those who’ve never seen paper (because of self-imposed illiteracy or the Internet, both of which comes to the same thing), this is the whitish stuff, not so dark, in thin sheets that we embarrass our parents and our respective nations on with a pen (another fictitious implement of literacy).

Consider the current facts:—

Paper prices

€665.04 (US$921.28) per metric tonne (2,204½ lbs) of 100gsm coated WF (woodfree) paper reels

€830.31 (US$1,150.23) per metric tonne of A4-size B-copy 80gsm sheets

Prices as of 25 Feb at the FOEX (Finnish Options Exchange). MOQ (minimum order quantity) is 20 tonnes (British/European practice) or 100 short tons (American practice). That’s 20 × 665.04 = €13,300.80 per minimum order to the Europenis or 100 × 665.04 = US$66,504 to the Americ*nts.

Ink prices

Ink prices have considerable leeway, depending on how well or badly you hang with your supplier, but generally:—

Standard offset printing ink (any colour) is US$24.47 per kilogramme (2 lbs 3 oz)

MOQ is conventionally 600 to 1,000 kg (one metric tonne) and usually allows mix and match of colours (cyan, yellow, magenta and black). Bad attitude incurs higher prices and additional (mis)handling surcharges.

If it were you at those prices, d’you think you could take a goddamn joke?

Because phoque yeu, that’s why!

Did you know…?

Paper pulp problems could ass-wipe the whole paper industry overnight, and therefore the whole printing industry. Know that?

(Public domain photo, courtesy of www.photos-public-domain.com)

The paper industry is one of the most stratified markets in the world, meaning that each paper subsector is compartmentalised with relatively no overlap with other subsectors. So newsprint manufacturers make only newsprint, paperboards make paperboard, and so on.

For comparison, plasticware manufacturers can make anything. The two deciding factors are what kind of extrusion mould they’re supplied with by (or prefabricates for) the client and the quantity of product ordered.

The only primary component that cuts across the whole paper industry is pulp, the major ingredient of all paper products.

The USA remains the world’s top paper pulp producer. But ’Murica F*ck Yeah is likely to sink into some kind of recession this year (2014). Weakening corporate bond prices will be the first sign of that storm. Weak bond prices affect all kinds of paper-product producers more than most other goods manufacturers — no idea why.

Life last year (2013) for the global paper-products industry hasn’t been too rough a ride, even in the face of paper-packaging demand failures (because of bad weather depressing consumer demand) AND in the face of massive bookstore failures, newspaper failures and print publishing missteps (blamed on challenges from electronic media, an excuse laughable and absurd).

I know the electronic-media excuse is absurd because Asian markets last year have seen double-digit growth in paper demand. That compensated for the sagging paper demand in North American and European markets because global paper supply (not the raw materials that go into producing paper) comes from North America and Europe.

Paperboard for corrugated packaging was the only thing that kept growing (and at double digits) in North America and Europe. If paper producers aren’t making enough moolah there, they’re doing something srsly wrong.

Then again, what the hell do I know? I’m in the printing business, not the paper one.

From now till 2017, many in the paper industry (including allied outsiders like myself) see no serious problems ahead. Demand and profits will continue to be slow but stable (because, whilst trees are becoming increasingly scarcer, there is still enough to go around). Moreover, new substitution technologies are appearing, such as the one that pulverises stone (rock) into thin, flexible, writeable sheets but not very eco-friendly yet.

All that, barring brainless politico-economic jockeying by jock-strapped politicos and econoclasts and/or the forecastable problems such as natural climate disasters usually labelled as ‘unforeseen.’

Please pray the paper industry won’t f*ck up, otherwise I’ll die and you won’t get to read The Naked Listener’s Weblog anymore. (Assuming you want to keep reading it…)

*

The world’s most traded commodity is ink. Know that?

Comes in tins (cans), actually … bought by the kilogramme
(image from author’s collection)

We all know ink is more expensive than blood.

(Interestingly, blood is the world’s only non-man-makeable liquid.)

Just look at your useless, designed-in-America-assembled-in-China/Mexico desktop printer and the criminal cost of ink cartridges for it (Agent Orange-immune Vietnam-made).

Printer ink (as opposed to the professional kind called printer’s ink) was trading at its usual level of US$1,000 a barrel (119.24 litres or 31½ gallons) at the New York Futures Exchange as of 28 Feb.

Alright, printer ink isn’t exactly printer’s ink, but you get the general idea. Your yee-yee ass ink cartridge demand in turn bumps up professional ink prices. China is ramping up demand for both types of ink, by the way.

Please … don’t argue with someone who buys ink by the kilogramme. Because phoque yeu, that’s why!

Stop making printouts unless absolutely necessary.

Recycle your goddamn ink cartridges.

Learn PDF and take screenshots.

Do everything on your $2,000 Facebook and pr0n machine called a computer, preferably with one hand on the mouse and the other on a body part (yours or your pet’s).

While you’re tossing yourself off with (and on) that $2,000 pr0n machine, pray that the ink industry won’t f*ck up, otherwise I’ll die and … etc.

(via istockphoto.com)

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