Comments by docsavage (page 15)

Stoicism became a popular philosophy in the late stages of the Roman empire when lots of bad things were happening to people and people had to learn how to emotionally deal with that. There really is no point getting angry or upset about things beyond your control. Since things seem to be worsening in the U.S. and the U.S. is becoming like the late stages of the Roman empire, Stoic writers like Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius may become more popular. In one of my favorite novels, "A Man in Full" by Tom Wolfe, the main character adopts Stoicism as his philosophy.

Just no fishnet stockings. I've had the buttons on my shirt pulled off when they've become tangled up in those.

U.S. life expectancy is declining too. There were three straight years of decline from 2015 to 2017 and then two more in 2020 and 2021. There also appears to be elevated mortality so far in 2022. This isn't due to lack of resources directed at health care. The U.S. spends 16% of GDP, the highest in the world, on health care. This compares to 6% in 1960. As spending in this area has increased, America has dropped from number ten to number thirty in country rankings of life expectancy. The medical cartel and big pharma are run for the benefit of the people who work in it and not the average person. This is true throughout the economy. I work for the military-industrial complex, the main purpose of which is to enrich the people who work for it. This requires that we exaggerate foreign threats in order to justify continuation of that spending. You also have the higher education complex, which sucks up increasing amounts of money while turning out graduates who can't get a job. You have the big Wall Street banks, which get bailed out when they get in trouble. You have big tech, which has joined into an alliance with the government to engage in censorship. I can go on, but you get the idea. The commonality is that all these industries increase their wealth through political connections. They use these connections to eliminate potential competition, get subsidized or bailed out when needed, get favorable tax or regulatory treatment and so on. Meanwhile, average people become poorer and live shorter lives. This will lead to the political rise of populist outsiders, either on the left or right, since the political establishments of both parties support the current system.

I think the decline of strip clubs has more to do with the legal environment they are operating in. What keeps an industry healthy is competition among the producers and choice among the consumers. In many cities it has become increasingly hard to open a new strip club in a new area of town. Zoning laws and licensing laws are a difficult hurdle standing in the way of starting up a new strip club. Imagine if no new restaurants could open and existing restaurants didn't have to worry about being driven out of business by a new and better restaurant. Quality would decline. This is what you have in the strip club industry. Strip clubs were never allowed in the ritzy areas of town but could often be found in somewhat safe working-class areas. Many existing strip clubs are located in areas that are now becoming dangerous urban ghetto areas and the clubs themselves are aging and undergoing slow physical deterioration. The middle-class customer base is moving further and further out into the suburbs away from existing strip clubs.

There is a third option. I invest all my money in lap dances.

I tend not to like high priced restaurants with snooty waiters. I like what is sometimes called "comfort food", which is food your mom might have fed you when you were a child. Here in Indiana the two largest ethnic groups were the Germans and English, which is my heritage, so I can find the type of food I grew up with relatively easily. At one time, Indiana had more cafeterias than any other state. The food there appealed to the dominant ethnic groups. The MCL cafeteria chain is still here. The last time I went I got fried chicken, corn on the cob, cole slaw and blueberry pie. Pies are popular there. Sugar cream pie is considered the state pie and MCL also has that along with apple pie, cherry pie, pumpkin pie and lemon meringue pie. I also go to Shapiro's cafeteria downtown. That is run by a Jewish family. I especially like the Jewish rye bread, which I get with my meal. I also like the Workingman's Friend east of downtown. It's an old tavern that has been there a hundred years. I sit at the counter and get a hamburger, iced tea and French fries. I stopped there last Friday night while heading for Dancers strip club on the east side.

If a dancer gets angry or upset with a regular customer who does lap dances with another girl that may drive the customer off. Most good dancers don't do that. However, I think sometimes a customer wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants the special treatment he receives from a regular while at the same time switching away from her when he feels like it. When he does that, he should expect the friendliness level from his regular to drop at least some. I have a lot of regulars. I'll always pick my regular. When I come into the club, they usually head straight for me with a smile on their face when they see me. If I started saying "not today but maybe some other time" that might no longer happen. The exception is when it is obvious my regular didn't show up for some reason. I'll sometimes pick another girl. This can turn into a problem, though, when I go back because I may have two girls heading for my table at the same time. Usually, if I want variety I visit on a different shift or go to a different strip club. The only problem with doing lap dances in different clubs is if I have regulars in three or four clubs and they all move to the same club. That's happened a couple times.

I have more insecurities around my age than my smell. I think some dancers just don't like spending time with a customer in his sixties. I can do something about my hygiene but not much about my age, so I just accept that. I could have gone to strip clubs in my twenties or thirties but decided back then I'd rather have a girlfriend.

@ilbbaicni you are right. I wasn't thinking at all clearly when I posted that last comment. Maybe I'm getting senile and should retire. In my case, I am saving younger people from having to pay taxes to support me but social security has nothing to do with me personally. I work for the military in accounting, and we have a separate pension system. I don't mind working. People at work come to me all day and ask for my help and I like helping people. I also get to work with computers and I like computers. There is a serious shortage of cute girls in my office, though. I tell my stripper regulars I wish I could hire them.

I'm 66 and still working. One thing I've decided to do is work until 70 if I stay in good health. I feel like it is a little unfair to force young people to support an old Boomer like me with their taxes while I take a fifteen-year vacation at the end of my life. Maybe more young people could afford apartments or houses without that added tax burden. When the retirement age was set at 65 the average life expectancy was 65. Now it is 78. The Social Security system worked when there was a small Depression era generation retiring but that was a one-time thing. I follow the maxim "you are only as old as the women you feel".

The strip club here in Indiana that has the most reviews is Brad's Brass Flamingo here in Indianapolis. The key to their success seems to be consistency and an ability to offer something for the customer who makes a little more money than average. Unsuccessful strip clubs attract customers who don't make much money and therefore don't have much to spend.

Among former regulars they later became a receptionist for a lawyer, a hair stylist, a casino employee, a nurse, a warehouse worker and a female bartender. Strippers tend to skew towards coming from a working-class background that doesn't highly value education and the average jobs they end up getting in later years reflect that. Some do better but some do worse. Two former regulars died of drug overdoses, and one was shot and killed by a boyfriend after she left him. If they are pretty, though, they get a few years making a lot of money as a stripper. Since looks and youthfulness in women is so highly prized, young women have it better than young men. Most high earning strippers, though, don't seem to be very aware that they will be at that earning peak for only a few years.

Adjusted for inflation, incomes have dropped for 19 straight months in a row. The third quarter of this year saw the biggest increase in household debt since 2008. The 2008 increase was followed by a serious recession. Taxes last year were 19.8% of GDP. The only time it was higher was in 1944 when we were paying for World War II. In spite of high taxes, we are running trillion dollar a year deficits. Federal debt as a percentage of GDP just went past 100%. The last time that happened was also in World War II. Payroll numbers are increasing but the labor force participation rate is dropping. Discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job are not counted as unemployed. Most new jobs are part time jobs. Full time jobs with good pay and benefits are declining as a percentage of jobs. There is a record number of people working a second job, because they can't pay their bills with rising costs. More people go to college but get degrees with little economic value. The combination of increasing prices and lack of good jobs is forcing more young people to live with their parents.

Pertaining to the guy who said "yuck", I never insult strippers. A number of my regulars over the years have said customers frequently make derogatory comments about their looks. You have to have a thick skin to be a stripper. The sensitive type is driven out of the business by things like that. One time I visited my all-time favorite. She looked like she was about to cry. I asked what was wrong and she said a customer said she was fat. She wasn't fat. Some customers are just misogynists who hate women. They drive off strippers who normal customers would enjoy getting lap dances from.

Saying certain speech incites violence is often a matter of subjective interpretation and is therefore open to abuse by government officials who want to engage in censorship. You can't look into someone's mind and see what their intent was. You need objective, not subjective, measures of what constitutes acceptable speech. It's especially important that people be allowed to criticize government officials. You don't want government officials to be solely in charge of what is acceptable speech involving them. Me saying something derogatory about a government official and then a crazy person hearing it and getting angry and shooting that government official is a situation that some would say is one that justifies censorship. I would not agree with that. Saying "yuck' to a stripper photo is more a question of what constitutes good manners. It's not really a first amendment issue and the subject of hate speech or the first amendment is not really involved there.

In the movie "Taxi Driver" in the original script the pimp was black. The director, Scorsese, switched him to white. This may have been to avoid appearing to be a rightwing racist engaging in a negative stereotype involving blacks. The pimp in the movie was not a likeable character. The actor playing the role, Harvey Keitel, asked Scorsese to find him some real-life white pimps to study for the role. Scorsese had a great deal of trouble finding some. Almost all pimps in New York in the seventies were black.

This is a privately owned website, so any first amendment free speech issues don't apply here except the few restrictions laid out by the Supreme Court. The owner decides what goes on here. He has decided someone can say "yuck" to a photo and anyone else can then condemn that person for doing so. There has been a lot of attempts in recent years by would-be censors to confuse the issue of free speech. First amendment restrictions along the lines of "don't yell fire in a crowded theater" and libel or slander laws restrict some speech. Increasingly, though, anyone saying something offensive is accused of "hate speech". If you give government the power to censor "hate speech" the government can censor any unpopular opinion just by labeling it "hate speech". Freedom of speech is then gone. Most countries never had free speech and Americans should cherish it. Every would-be tyrant or dictator doesn't want freedom of speech.

Twilight Zone, the Dick van Dyke show, Perry Mason, The Avengers, The Prisoner, The original Star Trek, Rockford Files, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The earlier Simpsons episodes. I've watched little television in the last twenty years. Now I usually just watch movies from Netflix. I liked the episodes of Breaking Bad, American Horror Story and Rick and Morty I saw. I really liked a British tv series called Utopia. My favorite of all recent tv series was Burn Notice. My all-time favorite dancer took the name "Fiona" while working as a stripper because people told her she looked like the Fiona character on that show. That is my type.

Trolls insulting people has a purpose behind it. I'll offer an opinion and, rather than respond with reasons why my opinion is wrong, they act outraged and insult me. This is just an attempt at verbal intimidation to try to shut me up. It doesn't work because words don't harm me. It's also a form of rejection and an attempt to make me an outcast. That doesn't work either because I don't care about the opinion of some stranger on the internet. Often, people who rely heavily on insults have a mental inability to develop good arguments or are just too lazy to do so.

The point Icee makes about working to improve your looks is generally true. All other things being equal, it's almost universally true that a female would prefer a guy in good physical shape over one in bad physical shape. I lost thirty pounds one time and noticed a subtle shift in the way women interacted with me after I got down to normal weight. They were a little more flirty and friendly. Success with women also requires being able to spot which ones are interested in you. Some women are just not that into you and nothing you can do will change that. You need to be able to quickly drop the ones who are not interested and move on. When I was young, I was very guilty of spending months trying to win over some uninterested girl I had a crush on while ignoring other girls who really liked me.

A guy in his forties might be able to date women in their twenties but I'm sixty-six. A relationship with a female in her twenties that doesn't involve me spending money on her or giving money to her is highly unlikely. I could date someone fifteen or so years younger, and have, but at this point I don't see why I would want to. I'm not physically attracted to the fifty-year-old women I could date. I don't care about having someone doing my cooking or housecleaning. A lot of them have financial, health or adult child problems that would become my problems if I became involved with them. I have an introverted personality and don't feel a need for constant social companionship.

A sixties tv show called "The Prisoner" which I watched as a child. The main character is knocked out and awakens in a village where he is given a number as a name, is constantly watched, and is not allowed to leave. It reminded me of school where I wasn't treated as an individual, was constantly watched and told what to do, and couldn't leave. I identified with the character on the tv show.

If you think this conversation is acrimonious, I can think of one that would top it. We have a Ukrainian stripper and a Russian stripper at a nearby strip club. I have never seen them anywhere near each other. I could invite them both to my table and ask them what they think about the war.

Part of the reason women are less materialistic now is that they are less future oriented now. They used to think in terms of finding a good husband. That means someone who is dependable, career oriented, nice to them and will take care of them. When I got married 40 years ago my wife was a pretty girl who had more handsome guys than me willing to have sex with her, but I had these other qualities. She ended up picking me and not one of them. Now I think more girls would just pick the best-looking guy and someone who is exciting to be around. That guy might be more likely to end up cheating on her or leaving her for another woman. He might have drug, alcohol, gambling or other addictions. He might be unambitious and have trouble holding a long-term job. He might get in fights or commit crimes. They don't look for that male breadwinner type who is nice but a little boring. A lot of these girls end up 30 years old with a couple kids and no husband. They'll never find a good husband because most guys who would be a good husband steer clear of the 30-year-old single mom.

This wasn't a date but one time a Mexican dancer got into a fight with border agents while she was trying to sneak relatives over the border and then asked me to go to the hospital emergency room with her so she would have someone to talk to while she waiting to see a doctor.