My virtual midlife crisis

What Now?

2012-02-13T10:06:00.000-08:00

I have done what I can to make this succeed. I have given of my material goods to the point that I am broke and blanket less. I have given my time and talents to the point of exhaustion. In the last few days I have tried everything I can think of to try and publicize our plight and encourage others to come and join us. Nothing has worked.
My arrest for civil disobedience did not work even though it was publicized well and I did it with a modicum of dignity. It did not increase our numbers. I got lots of support from my comrades and the community at large for which I am thankful but it still seems to have failed.
My videos and confronting the police to take them has gotten me assaulted but people seem to be unconcerned with police brutality and the plight of the poor. At least they are not concerned enough o hang out on the side of the road for a few hours each day.
I posted as many pictures as I was able to show that we still existed. I smiled and waved and spoke on tv to the supervisors it just failed to make any difference.
4 months down the road people have been exhausted. People have been driven away by the constant police harassment. People have been driven away by the relentless, “Spangers” demanding cigarettes and anything else one can imagine. People have been driven away by the never ending stream of insanity that we swim in each day. Not everyone is able to deal with the screaming meth addict or alcoholic in their face for hours at a time. This is not a failing on their part, simply a fact of life.
When we put the failings of society on display even the most compassionate turned away in horror.
And so the question still remains, What are we to do now?

Saturday on the edge

2012-02-12T06:20:00.000-08:00

A few pictures from what may be the slowest Saturday so far. The bulbs we planted are beginning to bloom as is the bruise on Katy's forearm from the police activity Friday.

Torture EPD Style

2012-02-11T09:54:00.001-08:00

The Occupy At the courthouse spends a significant part of the time Watching the Watchers. We document the constant harassment of the demonstrators as well as the abuse of the poor. They arrested Katy for apparently nothing then assaulted me while I tried to film them torturing her. The supreme court has ruled that filming the police is protected but the Eureka Police don't seem to care about the law. I will be filing another in a series of complaints for abuse with EPD on Monday but we need calls to complain about this obvious abuse as well.

Thursday Night Lights

2012-02-10T16:21:00.000-08:00

Calm before the storm we spent a nice night after the crazy ran away with the moon. Friday mid day they came and stole more of our signs, peoples clothes and even our water jug.

Equality leaps forward

2012-02-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Prop 8 was declared unconstitutional by the 9th circuit and some folks came down to the corner to celebrate.

Sunday Sunny Day

2012-02-05T23:34:00.000-08:00

The sun was out and so were the police as they came by to arrest for Lodging a couple of folks sleeping on benches in front of the court house. This is a despicable tactic to steal the blankets and sleeping bags of the houseless folks. They take them inside the jail and send their property to evidence then throw the person out on the street around midnight to freeze. These are some fucked up in the head son's of bitches we are dealing with.

Iron Curtain Conflict.

2012-02-04T22:57:00.000-08:00

To paraphrase Churchill An Iron Curtain has descended upon Humboldt county. Freedom rings at the courthouse despite the fences of repression that are springing up all around us. We are revamping the Occupy to get a little space from the crazy that comes from the benches on occasion. went well until the EPD sent 5 police cars to steal the signs from 5 protesters.

Counter Revolutionary Occupy

2012-02-04T08:57:00.000-08:00

KIEM-TV tried to whip up a mob to get rid of our Occupation and failed epicly. Their "250" people turned out to be 50 odd tea party folks.

The Eagle Screams

2012-02-02T10:15:00.000-08:00

The first of every month the crowd at the Occupy has funds and a strange dance of abundance begins. By the 4th all will be broke and back to spanging but for a few days we live in the land of milk and honey.

We had the usual random police assholishness and such sadness as to rip out your heart. "Sheena" had no idea why she was being arrested and others of our band of misfit toys were hauled away later for public drunkenness and lack of self control. Some where over the rainbow is a space that allows for another solution. One that doesn't involve that evil building we have looming over us. A place that the broken and the ill used can find peace without imprisonment. Sabrina cried on my shoulder for an hour last night and I rocked her and stoked her hair and when the tears had dried up she drifted away. Turns out the new love of her life was just hanging out to spend her funds as was the last. We are not forced to abuse our fellow travelers on this island but so many of us do. When the eagle screams no telling whom will answer. Will add the video later as it wont upload.

Occupy Monday

2012-01-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

Another Saturday night

2012-01-28T23:11:00.000-08:00

The women in black came back and EPD fucked with them again showing what a bunch of sexists they are as the veterans for peace a male group is never hassled doing the exact same thing.

Pink toes and sunshine

2012-01-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

The sun broke out and we had the dog days of winter at Occupy Eureka. Our Friday evening social was a hit and Okie started another fight. Just another day in paradise.

Occupy the Courts

2012-01-21T11:43:00.000-08:00

Occupy MLK Day

2012-01-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

Pictures from the 15 Jan Martin Luther King Birthday celebration at Occupy Eureka.

Another Week on the Curb

2011-12-22T10:59:00.000-08:00

It has been another frustrating week. It is the solstice and a holiday for the few remaining Pagans it is also Homeless Memorial Day. A vigil will be held to remember those that die alone in the cold and dark each year. Then everyone will go back to the mall and buy another trinket for venerable Yorgi.

Many of our merry band of malcontents have gone off to refresh in the bosom of their biological families. I do not blame them as the family of occupy has become fragmented and looks upon some of as the crazy uncle that pisses in the punchbowl. It angers me that people are co-opting our dedication and action to start their petition drives and third party politics. They criticize us when the police come and kick our asses. They talk about putting pressure on our elected officials ignoring the fact that we are the pressure. Your Emails are deleted and the commander in deceit raises the threshold for his meaningless web zone signups.

They tell us we look bad with the crazy howling at the moon and they should go. As those folks that I share the benches with remind me when we step over the boundaries of their community, They were there when we came and they have been there for years. This has been their fight since they lost their job or their love or their strength or their mind. We have no right to exclude them as our county wide GA suggests. Are we to treat them as the rest of society already has. Move along, don’t make me look at you and know the fear. Fear is the mind killer and the dead thoughts are replaced with hatred but the anger is misplaced. It is the need for greed that has created this abysmal blight. A man running to be leader of the free world has so many houses that he cannot remember them all while in the real world women are raped on the street where they sleep denied the last of their humanity.

The tools of the war machine come down to our celebration as invited guests. We tried to show them we had no evil intent. They smiled and patted us on the head and said, “Be good little sheep and here are the rules. Oh and another thing you cannot give food to the hungry.” If you feed them they might live and stay and continue to scare us besides Xmas is for shopping silly protestor. Charity is for those that come on their knees begging as supplicants that will work for food and never complain that there are no books in the schools. We have nothing for these idle bums that walk all over town to collect enough cans for breakfast, they must move along and find Jebus in another town.

I think the only useful thing I have done on the courthouse steps is to treat some folks with respect, to listen and talk and share what food I am able. I have no illusion that the world will soon change but all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent.

Shots for solidarity

2011-12-17T16:39:00.000-08:00

Re-Occupy Day

2011-12-17T09:57:00.000-08:00

Today we come together to celebrate the freedoms we have under the constitution of the United States. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances and the right to be secure within our persons and papers.

We hold these truth’s to be self evident. All men are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. Be that creator a god as some believe or the combination of chemical processes governed by the laws of physics that over the process of 4 billion years evolved into us makes no difference we have those rights from birth.

But we only retain those rights, they only have meaning when we are free to exercise them. When the police come and steal our political speech in the form of our signs and banners they deprive us of our birthright. When they fence us off the courthouse lawn to deny us our right to assemble there they cut the heart out of those rights and that is why we are here today. I am updating the language a bit and using the word person rather then man as I prefer to include all persons in the umbrella of humanity and all persons are harmed when any of us are denied our basic rights.

A person only has those rights that they can defend. We come here to show the folks in power that we will defend our rights. We will Occupy this space as we are free women and men that have the right to peaceably assemble. We post our signs because as free people we have the right to voice our political concerns. We will not allow the petty tyranny of a local ordinance to deter us. We will not allow armed thugs to disregard those freedoms. We are committed to nonviolence so when the police come they can arrest us but we will return. We will be in the courts suing those officers and officials but most of all we will be here on the steps of the courthouse some of us beaten but none of us bowed and we will prevail.

The consent of the governed. We are the 99% is the credo of our movement. We are the governed and we never consented to this. We reject the crony capitalism and the for sale to the highest bidder government that it has produced. We reject the imperialism that has led to death and destruction around the globe. We reject the prison industrial complex and the torture and dehumanization that it runs on and the destruction it brings to our communities.

5425 occupiers have been arrested while no bankers have been prosecuted. The people that destroyed our way of life got 17 trillion dollars to rebuild and we get jail cells.
We reject the buyer beware capitalism that allows the 1% to steal from the middle class and we reject the criminalization of being poor. The way we do this is to stand together on the steps of the courthouse and demand that the rights of all people be respected.

Mission Revision

2011-12-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

We are Occupy Eureka and we have decided to stand up to the perverse desire of corporations to wring every penny of profit from every enterprise. They deliberately push beyond the limits of laws and regulations with disastrous consequences to the workers and the environment. When caught they lie, deny and obfuscate.
The privatization of government functions must stop. The militarization of the police must end. Public education must be properly funded and extend beyond K-12.
We must end foreign wars and the systematic oppression of other nations. We must end the war on the poor that criminalizes sleeping and going to the bathroom. We cannot afford to build prisons at the expense of schools and housing.
Unregulated capitalism has destroyed our economy and enriched the 1% beyond any reasonable level. We must revamp our tax system to value honest labor and end speculation. Capital should be taxed at the same rate as labor. Labor must be granted the same freedom of movement that capital is given.
The cost of pollution should be borne by the polluters. Resource extraction must be done in a sustainable manner without destroying the surrounding environment. Subsidies for industries that degrade the environment must be removed. Global warming must be addressed in the form of a sustainable national energy policy. Resource extraction from public lands must be done in a manner that benefits all members of society not just the few.
Our political system is corrupt. Political power is vested in the people and we must remove the concept of political rights for companies. All campaigns must be publicly financed and paid lobbyists abolished. We need to remove impediments in our political structure to true democracy. Our international relations must be revamped to put an end to empire. Trade between nations must be built on universal human rights and environmental protections not a race to the bottom.
We must rebuild our communities based on respect for all. Discrimination based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and country of origin must end.

The police State comes to Eureka

2011-12-01T09:47:00.001-08:00

I was kidnapped on the street in front of the courthouse today. In broad daylight a man came up to me and without saying a word he grabbed my hands put them in handcuffs and took me away. The man was, in addition to being a criminal, a police officer. Others of his ilk were doing the same thing to folks excising their rights to freedom of assembly and free speech. As a member of the occupy movement I have come to expect contempt for political dissent from the local police but being deprived of my liberty without due process is beyond the pale. I was held for 45 minutes without charge on the courthouse steps photographed and then released without charge or explanation. When the handcuffs were taken off I was told I would have to leave the public space in front of the courthouse. The fact that the officers called me, "sir" does not mitigate the criminality in their conduct. We are entitled to our liberty and cannot be deprived of it without due process. Surreptitiously "Booking" us on the steps of the court is not due process. holding me in shackles against my will while you steal my property and tear down my political signs is the definition of tyranny and should never be tolerated in a free society.

New day dawns

2011-11-13T09:40:00.000-08:00

The sun is back and our rally was awesomeness personified. We stared down the tools of fascism in their riot gear and brand new cars. Our schools are closing but the militarizing of the police never seems to get cut from the budget. We have no funds to feed the poor among us but there is no shortage of money to buy the clubs to beat them down when they have the temerity to ask for a toilet.
The folks from Humboldt state and the Arcata Occupation swelled our numbers and added to the festive air. Community renewing the spirit and hot food renewing the flesh.
The idea that a local politician has the right to deny 1st and 4th amendment rights is as laughable as it is repugnant. We are becoming a new entity as the days roll on. Learning to trust and support each other in our disparate little band of travelers on the road to a better way of life.
We are a work in progress, some days our own worst enemies. We are passion untempered by intellect at the wrong times. We are the angels of our better nature at others. We are united in the search for a better way.

Occupy Boo

2011-11-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

It is All Hallows Eve and I am back down on the curb. There is a bite in the breeze off Humboldt bay. It is just strong enough to clear the stench of car exhaust from my chapped nostrils.
The mood of the occupation is such a volatile beast. Friday we had assurances that we would be left to our own devices free from police interaction. As darkness descended on Saturday after an amazing rally rumors of a, “Police Action” began running through the crowd. At the appointed hour a single cruiser parked across the street and turned the eye of big brother upon us recording our reactions.
Now that they have recorded our response are they plotting our eviction? Will they bring the pain or whatever other sports metaphor the ex high school football hero’s care to couch their oppression in.
My guess is they will play a waiting game. We have support in the community and these political types fear waking the pacified masses.
If we can take action and stop literally shitting on the grass I think most in local power would be content to let us freeze on the lawn. This whole farce played out against the backdrop of vibrant speeches delivered with a thoughtful passion on the courthouse steps.
Sunday morning saw the occupiers scattered to the winds, recharging or relaxing I shared the curb with a couple of our weekend supporters and kept the vigil. The darkness of Sunday descended and our diverse group drifted back to occupied territory for a chill night both in mood and temperature.
That chill had turned to bitter frost by morning and the urinating in tents and the anguish of the reality challenged created another shrill standoff. Just another moment in the revolution.

Draft mission statement

2011-11-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

This is a draft mission statement for Occupy Eureka
Pleas add any suggestions in the comments or Talk to me at the occupation to get your ideas included. This is the 2nd revision.

We are Occupy Eureka and we have decided to stand up to the perverse desire of corporations to wring every penny of profit from every enterprise. They deliberately push beyond the limits of laws and regulations with disastrous consequences to the workers and the environment. When caught they lie, deny and obfuscate. Corporate America has funded wars and neglected schools. Corporate America has legalized robbery and called it the free market. Corporate America has destroyed our standing in the world by committing torture and other war crimes including aggressive war. The people have lost our fundamental human rights with corporations spying for the government then being granted immunity from prosecution. National security is used as a blanket excuse to prevent persons from receiving redress in the courts. To that end we are requiring fundamental changes to our system.
We demand an end to the privatization of government functions. The system of no bid contracting and crony capitalism that permeates our government must end now. We will not accept banks charging fees on the poor to collect benefits or prisons and jails run as for profit entities.
We will not accept the national debt being settled on the backs of the working class and the elderly. Look to the example of Greek austerity measures and that governments failure to provide for it‘s people. We will not accept cuts to programs for the poorest members of society while continuing to grant tax cuts to billionaires. We will no longer stand by and watch corporations pollute our air and water while they plunder the natural resources of the commons.
We have endured a 30 year assault on working people with wages remaining stagnant while CEO pay skyrockets and we say enough. We demand the end to classifying earnings as capital gains. The income from labor is as valuable to society as that earned by the investor class and shall no longer be taxed at higher rates.
We require an Immediate moratorium on foreclosures of owner occupied dwellings. Too many people are living on our streets and too many people are being thrown out of their homes with fraudulent documents.
End the War in Afghanistan. End the occupation of Iraq. Stop the bombings and drone attacks on the peoples of Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. If we lack the resources to adequately feed and house our own people we can no longer afford to make war on others nations. This is to include the army of mercenaries known as security contractors. We further demand that no new country be attacked without a declaration of war by congress. The tyranny of the unitary executive must end now. The president does not have the right to order indefinite detention of or the execution of the citizenry. We further demand an end to secret prisons and the indefinite detention of political prisoners.
We demand a single payer not for profit healthcare system. Repealing the farce of the Affordable Care Act, a homage to corporate greed and replace it with Medicare for all.
As the federal reserve is loaning money to corporations at an effective zero interest rate from the discount window in secret we require that the same rates be extended to the generation of students buried under a mountain of debt preparing for jobs that those same corporations destroyed.
A financial transaction Tax, A small fee imposed on the buying and selling of equities and securities, should be instituted to reduce the effects of speculators in the market place. If the capitalists are going to rain their “Creative Destruction” down on the 99% we require them to contribute to the rebuilding.
We require that the Glass Steagall act regulations of 1933 be reinstituted to separate speculators from the banking industry.
Corporations are not living breathing entities and are not entitled to human rights. Commercial speech is not political speech and is not entitled to 1st amendment protection. If a corporation lies it is committing fraud and corporate fraud should be prosecuted without exception. Corporate personhood must be abolished.
The hiring of paid lobbyists should be outlawed. Freedom of speech should not be a scalar concept based on monetary value but is a fundamental human right. Overturn the decision of the supreme court in Citizens United granting corporations the right to spend unlimited funds to influence the outcome of elections undermining democracy.
We demand an end to the war on workers rights to organize and the elimination of the fictitiously named right to work.
We demand an end to the war on women’s reproductive health and that the basic human right to health care not be dependent on gender.
We demand that equal protection under the law be enforced for the LGBT community. End separate but equal marriage laws that are patently unconstitutional.
We demand immigration policies that allow workers the same freedom of movement that capital is permitted. We demand an end to so called free trade agreements. We will no longer stand for the lowering of standards for worker safety and environmental protection that these agreements permit. We will not accept trade agreements with nations such as Columbia that openly murder labor activists.
Capitalism unchecked leads to monopoly and that has proven disastrous. We must end too big too fail. We must no longer except giant agro business creating monoculture diets and hormone ridden food.
This list is not intended to be all inclusive and in no way limits further demands to be determined at later dates.

This list is not intended to be all inclusive and in no way limits further demands to be determined at later dates.

Transgressing Transcript

2011-10-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

This is the transcript of my remarks at Occupy Eureka Saturday 29 October.

I came down to the courthouse on the 8th of October and have come back every day since because something is wrong with our system. The question I encounter the most out here on the curb is why are we down here? What do we want? The disparate signs give out a confused message. The short answer is we want something different. We want a system that gives the average citizen a say in government equal to the giant corporation. The essence of democracy one person one vote has never been embraced by America and we feel it is past time to do so.
We spend more money on defense than the rest of the world combined. We still spend billions to prepare for war with the Soviet Union that hasn’t existed for over a decade.
Now more than ever the 1% own the Government, the media and the Robert’s court. We allow war criminals to go on book tours and have criminalized sleeping. We allow corporations to openly bribe a justice of the supreme court, we have lobbyists writing our laws.
Let me share a few numbers with you. 46 million, the number of people living in poverty today. The most in our nation’s history. 50 the percentage of people with zero or less net worth.
The wages of the middle class have been under attack for over 30 years and when the latest bubble burst the 1% got bailed out while the rest of us got swamped. We preference idle speculation over honest labor in the tax code. We bailed out the financial institutions and they paid their executives bonuses rather then lend money to small businesses.
We give tax breaks to big box retailers that drive the local merchants that make up the back bone of our community out of business, corporations line up at the discount window at the fed to borrow trillions at effective interest rates of zero while students get buried under a mountain of debt preparing for non existent jobs.
Corporations dump toxic waste in our air and water and call it an externality. Corporate persons that don’t breath or drink or eat control the regulators with bribes or remove the regulations all together.
We have handed these so called “Job Creators” trillions in tax breaks and gotten no jobs in return, only factory closures, off shoring and downsizing. We have set our workers in competition with slave labor abroad and prison labor here at home.
There is a long history in America of taking to the streets stretching back to our founding. The labor movement got us the 40 hour week and the end of child labor. Marching in the streets led to the vote for women, civil rights and improvement for the LGBT community. The Bonus Army led to the New Deal and the most successful anti poverty program for the elderly in the history of humanity.
We require an Immediate moratorium on foreclosures of owner occupied dwellings.
End the Wars and stop the militarization of local police departments.
A financial transaction Tax should be instituted to reduce the effects of speculators in the market place. We require that the Glass Steagall act regulations of 1933 be reinstituted to separate speculators from the banking industry. Above all we demand an end to corporate personhood.

Occupy Eureka Talks Back

2011-10-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

The county said take down the tents we said NO! this is our response letter.

Occupy Eureka
The corner of 5th and I streets

To the County Administrative Officer for the county of Humboldt in response to your letter of 25 October 2011.
It is the consensus of Occupy Eureka that we are not vacating this space.
We are unable to comply with your requests as outlined. We find them unresponsive to the subject at hand. The removal of our kitchen will impede our feeding of the members of the occupation and prevent us from continuing to feed the homeless members of our community but will do nothing to alleviate the need for people to use the restroom between the hours of 10:30pm and 7:30am. The removal of our tents will prevent the occupiers from sheltering against inclement weather and maintaining core body temperature creating another serious health hazard but again will do nothing to help solve the sanitation problem.
You site the actions taken in Arcata that have opened the city to lawsuits for violation of civil rights law and their law enforcement officers to possible prosecution for intimidation under color of authority. We feel it would be unwise for the city of Eureka or Humboldt county to follow that poorly chosen course of action. As you come from a system that relies on force to control the population we are not surprised that was your first response.
We are a self policing community committed to the Non-violent redress of grievances. The attempt in the late hours of 26 Oct 2011 of the police to intimidate the Occupation is unacceptable and unwarranted. Are we going to be subjected to police militarism of the style that the Oakland Police are now being vilified?
We are free people exercising our right to the freedom of speech; and have the freedom to peaceably assemble and redress of grievances.
Under our system of law city ordinances do not supersede rights granted under the United States Constitution in the 1st and 4th amendments.
Your offer to, “allow” us to remain without portions of our occupation that speak directly to the rights of citizens to freely exercise their rights is in itself an infringement on our first amendment right to free speech and again does nothing to resolve the sanitation issue.
The act of sleeping in the public square is an integral part of our movement and is thus protected speech. The presence of tents has been ruled protected speech by many jurisdictions including Oakland, Orange County and Humboldt State University.
We look forward to continuing dialog on this matter. As always your representatives are welcome to attend our twice daily general assemblies held at 12pm and 6pm to resolve conflict through constructive dialog rather than threats.

The members of Occupy Eureka
This letter may be freely distribute in its entirety

20 days by the road

2011-10-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

sorry for the paucity of posts. Have some pics.

Heard on the Curb

2011-10-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

Day 5 of Occupy Eureka left me sun burnt and a little dispirited. There is not much growth to our merry band of occupiers. I think this weekend will make or break us. With some publicity if we cannot generate some interest I will have to rethink my position.
On the positive side we are making progress toward an agenda. I am finding the process very interesting, the desire to conform to a system is very strong in some of us. The homeless folks that have joined us ad a level of volatility to the assemblies.
There is an undercurrent among some of the organizers, primarily the Prison protest woman concerning police confrontation. During our assembly she pushed for demanding things in writing from city government when all we were discussing was sending a letter to the council, board of supervisors, Police and Sheriff announcing our intention to peacefully protest. I think it is an error in judgement to force public officials into taking positions before the dialog takes place. We will see.
There is a weekend March in the planning stages from the F street pier to the courthouse and some speakers on behalf of the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay will be there Thursday.
"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one" Was my favorite overheard quip and I was the witness for a young couple that got married. They will have an interesting story to tell about their marriage in the future, I hope. And as usual the government was out helping some one in our little town.

Curbside Day 2

2011-10-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

Day 2 brought out some very committed folks of the organizer type and some first time folks both old and young. I was able to handle 4 hours a day but when I dot home both nights I was shot. There is much to like about this movement and the folks that it has drawn out. I am not of the come together in a circle to sing "Kumbaya" or something drew me to this kind of guy and there is that aspect to dislike.

I do believe that people demonstrating in the streets has had positive effects on the life of the middle class. As evidence I site the union movement in creating the 40 hour week and the right to a workplace that was safe. The civil rights struggle, Women's suffrage, The "Bonus Army", AIM, the list goes on. There is of course the flip side to that argument, The Klan and the John Birchers put people in the streets as well. Judging by the level of racial hatred I listened to from a man that was outraged that some one would take issue with navy blowing out the hearing of whales their effect lingers as well.

Eureka is a pretty even blend of left and right and they are used to seeing the Left on the courthouse lawn so the horn honks and thumbs up are punctuated with middle fingers but most people are civil. The declaration of grievances seems legitimate even if many will call it vague. I suspect that as the assemblies meet there will emerge something a bit more polished. I am still extremely pessimistic but at the moment it is at least a chance to make a little noise for my side.
The movement is based on a true democracy model. This is some video from the first general assembly for Occupy Eureka

Occupational Hazard

2011-10-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

I lent some time and energy to the Occupy movement today, Occupy Eureka to be precise. As I expected it was a mixed bag. Jack, one of the regulars at these events was there but some of the crowd was different. The Ladies in Black were there, they hold a weekly vigil to end the wars. The young woman in the video was passionate about the plight of the victims of the prison industrial complex and was vehemently anti capitalist.

I was glad to see that a few young people were there as well. They are very earnest and expect to succeed. I tend to be skeptical based on the history. One young woman told me she had been waiting all her life for people to wake up and that this was it. I fear she will be disappointed. I was one of the odder looking folks so naturally I was photographed by one local paper and interviewed by another.
Zack from the North Coast Journal was doing a very thorough job of interviewing the crowd but as he confided that his editor had instructed him to ask everyone about a comparison to the, “Tea Party” I think their coverage will miss the mark.
I do not know if this movement will accomplish much but I will give it what time and support I can.

Fragile Fall

2011-10-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

Spent a fine fall day immersed in a feast of transient art. Pastels on the Plaza happens the first Saturday in October. This year it happened to coincide with the Redwood Coast Belly Dancing Festival

While not as fragile as sand paintings the drawings will vanish with the first rains of the season. The ladies that came to share their joy of the dance will fade with the Sunday twilight. Enjoy a little taste October.

This is some footage of one of the headliners, Ya Habibi dance troupe, from an earlier performance.

Tea and Hot Rods.

2011-09-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

The Republicans are all debate crazy and the Guano on toast points was served up by the usual suspects.

The media as usual has fixated on the shiny object, the anti-vaccination, and missed the bigger picture in the war on women. They would rather have their daughters die then have sex.

Bachman is anti science but you nave to be nuts not to acknowledge the success of the germ theory of disease and vaccinations. The HPV vaccine prevents a common type of cancer with very little risk. Because it is a sexually transmitted virus the wing nuts think it will cause their daughters to have sex if they get them vaccinated. I have never understood their connecting ignorance with protecting but it leads to lots of misery and in this case can lead to death. No rational person makes that choice. I know I am way outside the mainstream in my thought process on public policy but this I find disturbing. The anti government folks cheer when the government kills citizens some of which are most certainly innocent. I do understand the let him die sentiment screamed from the crowd but I have to call bullshit on the Ron Paul response. If the free market and god were doing such a spectacular job Why were Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon all able to find the need for the government to intervene.

The voice in the crowd is the true believer of the Objectivist philosophy. Only the strong should enjoy the fruits of society and the only role of the government is to enforce private property and contract rights. This position is repugnant to me but it is intellectually consistent. The freedom for others to die is an article of faith for these folks.

The Paul position is just ignoring the facts. It sucks to be poor but with the help of society it sucks less. The rising tide didn’t lift all boats and the most recent government bailouts only saved the financial sector. Nothing prevents churches and communities from paying for the uninsured now. They simply don’t do it. There are lots of charities and they do some good but they were not solving the problem. Government has not solved the problem either but it has done a measurably better job.

Paul’s complaint about the vaccine mandate from a freedom standpoint means nothing because he does not extend that body sovereignty to the individual but to the parent. Women are never to be granted sovereignty over their own bodies in the Ron Paul Libertarian Utopia.

The video is from the Cruzin Eureka car show. I chose the 3rd to calm the fear of crazy these folks instill in me.

What might have been?

2011-09-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

I cannot help thinking how much more it would have deterred future terrorism if we had spent our efforts rebuilding something really cool at ground zero instead of turning so many countries into rubble. Condi Rice and, "nobody could have predicted" aside the reaction shows us two options and we seem to have gone the wrong way.

The first gives me a little hope. As soon as the passengers on flight 93 were confronted with new data they quickly overthrew the existing paradigm and took some very altruistic actions.

the second is the path more traveled by and it has led to disaster. We decided to team up with a bunch of evil dudes to do something with no thought to the consequences. We might have learned a lesson from that and we will be able to avoid creating new disasters in other peoples countries. The jury is still out. The number of people living without protection of civil society in America says the jury is still out on a lot of things. Somewhere the "In order to form a more perfect union" concept got scrapped. The constitution grew from the failure of the Articles of Confederation. The civil war grew out of the failures of the constitution.

I just do not understand the fetish of the founders. I speculate that it comes from the same place as religion. It uses the indoctrination methods of religion but that is for another day.

I think our little town has enbraced a nice reaction to the 10th Aniversary. The proper amount of over indulgence, materialism and the continuation of that quest for a more perfect union. Enjoy some of that experience.

A bird brained idea

2011-08-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

A video blog from the foot of F street.

Pictures of life

2011-08-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Putting a few pictures of a summer's day ride about town up to share. Flowers and birds belie the vacant storefronts and homeless camps a few streets away.

The diversity of life and the devistation of dreams side by side.

Pelican bleat

2011-08-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

The day was cool but no fog so I soaked and stretched and rode down to the water to think. Watching the brown pelicans and the king fishers dive for their meals. They are spectacular, the precision with which they operate. It amazes me to watch what 13 . 7 billion years of random chance, of quantum probabilities can produce. The interaction of quarks and strings, the tiny variations in the strength of hydrogen bonds. The solutions to survival that has come out of that dance is awe inspiring when I take the time to pay attention.

We always have lots of seagulls here but I have never seen this many pelicans in a group so that is cool. I wish I had some footage of the trip to Florida where the Pelicans flew by at eye level along the break water. 10 or 15 birds in a line gliding along on massive wings.

I let myself get wrapped up in nonsense too often and forget how spectacular it is to live here on the Humboldt Bay. As we are never likely to win a battle in the future it seems rather pointless to go to war.

I am stable and feel like writing some of the time. Am playing with the 3rd man story again but got weirded out when the EPD showed up in large numbers. I had fallen into the page so did not notice what went on till they were packing up to leave. The encounter had something to do with one of the homeless dudes but I didn’t see an ambulance so I will have to check out the local news in a few days.

I will post an exerpt in a few days if I can keep it rolling.

Wing nuts

2011-07-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

Outlook not favorable

2011-07-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

I think it is hard to imagine for the young today the system shock from the riots and assassinations of the late 60’s. When the price of gas doubled in the oil shock and then you couldn’t have all you wanted even if you could afford it. That just freaked the counter culture right the fuck out. Want to know why the peace and love generation turned into the greedy selfish fucks that everyone loves to hate the baby boomers that is what made them that way.

Over the next couple of years I am afraid that same youth will get to experience something far worse. There are no jobs. The very wealthy are doing very well, they are buying lots of new toys. Apple pads, pods, phones and their numerous clones are flying off the shelves. The top quintile is now 60 million people and that is more than enough to sustain the top quintile. As long as they can quit paying for anything needed by the other 4/5ths. The 13 million long term unemployed are about to start running out of benefits. “The little depression” as Paul Krugman calls it is upon the rest of us and the safety net we spent the last seventy years building is about to be destroyed. The government is out of money when tax burdens are at the lowest in 60 years. No brainier to raise taxes in a normal world but in Randistan that is heresy. The co-operative government that created the highest material standard of living in the history of civilization was now evil, but that is another rant. Because of Austerity measures to combat a revenue problem unemployment will go up and poverty will become endemic in a manner not seen since the 1930’s

I look around my little town and it is dying a slow death. A high end clothing shop opening at the mall will not make up for the closing of schools and restaurants. And for the newly fired most wont even get 26 weeks unemployment let alone extended benefits. It is my opinion that we are at the breaking point. There are not enough cans to pick out of the trash for us all to survive and humans being what they are it will not be pretty. The tent cities are already full. There is now a block long Bushville in the warehouse district now. It wont be fair to call the Obamavilles until he passes his grand bargain then all bets are off. When the next wave of foreclosures hit there is no place for these folks to go.

There is a big club and you ain’t in it.

2011-07-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

In 1066 an event referred to as the Norman Conquest occurred in Europe. When it was over the victors decided to count the spoils resulting in the a document, Doomsday Book. Finished in 1085 it revealed the 1% fact. 1% of the population owned just about everything. There have been lots of attempts at redistribution of that wealth since then but in the end a thousand years later the 1% still own as much as the rest of us put together.

In an effort to get back to levels of the feudal days the plutocrats have decided we need to attack the New_Deal safety net programs that made life tolerable for those serfs tenacious enough to live to old age.

Previous presidents had done much to improve the lot of the "least of society“,Lincoln freed the slaves, Roosevelt broke the trusts, Wilson promised pensions to the vets of WWI. Generally these attempts were clawed back, Jim Crow,The gilded age, The unleashing of troops on the Bonus Army. Social security was the first to stick and was improved over the course of the next seventy years. Medical care was added and the system was expanded to include more workers and improved disability insurance. Unemployment insurance, cobra health insurance and food stamp programs also came along to protect the populace from the creative destruction of capitalism.

The success of these programs was on display when the latest bubble burst in housing and the great recession of 2007 came along. We had a contraction along the lines of the great depression but we didn’t get the horrible bread lines and displaced populations because we had these programs in place. Little comfort to the folks that lost their jobs and homes but better than the, “brother can you spare a dime”days of the 1930’s.

For some reason after the government bailout of the rich with TARP and trillions of dollars lent at zero interest by the Federal reserve worked to save the investment economy the 1% have decided it is time to destroy the folks at the bottom to avoid picking up the tab.

Enter the worst president in my lifetime and the “Shock Doctrine”. The debt ceiling, a nonsensical and possibly unconstitutional law, (See the 14th amendment)is being used to create an artificial crisis to justify cutting programs for the poor. A deficit that can be traced to illegal wars and huge tax cuts for the 1% will be balanced on the backs of the old, the poor and the disabled veterans.

We do not have a spending problem at the moment we have a revenue problem. It can be short term or we can make it permanent that is the decision we are about to make. Tax rates are at historic lows. Social Security Never contributed a dime to the deficit until the “Fierce Advocate” thought just one more tax cut and the confidence fairy will save us all. They already cut benefits with the last change in COLA this one will lower the standard of living for those at the bottom of the scale. There is no reason to capitulate on entitlements now. These programs are stable for at least a decade so the president can burn the village to save the village after the election if he thinks it is that important to make more elderly poor. Although with higher then 8% unemployment and having threatened the life of old people I think his re-election is now in serious doubt for the first time. If the economists that I tend to believe are correct this austerity fetish will probably result in another down turn and then even batshit crazywill beat him.

Rather then continue to increase poverty, 25% of the population at the moment, we need a different plan. No more failed Laffer curve discredited bullshit tax cuts as stimulus. Lower the retirement age to create jobs. Lower the cost of Medicare by lowering the age and expanding the pool with some people that consume a little less will extend the program life. Make the subsidy a sliding scale for Medicare if you need the elderly to pay more, raise the price for the richest. When unemployment has dropped to 4% or below then we can address cutting no defense discretionary spending. End all foreign wars and close 20% of overseas facilities immediately.

Mad man goes to Mad River

2011-07-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

Went out to the Summerfest, Mad River variety.
These are some of the things we enjoyed. These folks had their act together. Major public transpo so instead of crippling walks from parking lots just to get there I was able to enjoy walking about the event.

Even intellectuals and TV stars can be jerks

2011-07-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

If we are going to get past arbitrary codes of conduct, (religion) and move to a rational society based on equal protection under the law we are going to have to check our privilege at the door. If your behavior makes another human being uncomfortable you have to be willing to look at that behavior. As a bald headed fat man with lots of scary tattoos and a long beard I do not have to worry about random assaults upon my person. People cross the street to avoid me as the saying goes so I am not going to understand the level of discomfort that an average woman may feel when confronted with unwanted advances no matter how benign in the eye of the confronter.
As the current celebrity do-gooders VS. the Village Voice dust up shows there are a lot of bad numbers when it comes to sexual exploitation and or assault but 1 in 7 women as victims of some type of sexual attack in the US is what is out there. That number is low by the experiences of women I have talked with over the years but that doesn’t put it out of the realm of possibility. This reality requires one to at least listen when a woman claims that your behavior was inappropriate. I would have thought that educated skeptics would listen to the evidence as a matter of course but that doesn’t seem to be the default position when it comes to women and their complaints.

Down and Out.

2011-07-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

The summer arrived up here on the coast. Mid 60’s for highs with some afternoon sun. Have been feeling pretty down with a flair of the IBS but still trying to get out and about. Level of fitness is horrible but I got the bike out on the 4th. Some pictures from the festivities. The 2nd amendment entertainment booth was the oddest new venders, shooting Zombie targets with a toy assault rifle. Posted some pictures from the Sandcastle festival on yfrog.

A friend has a sick pussy cat. It has a liver disorder that makes it not want to eat so she has to syringe feed Lexi. long story short the Vet bills have been huge so if you can help her out that would be cool.
Post has been edited to remove the chip in widget. Lexi is much improved and will not need the tube. Thanks for your support.

Reality, it's a?

2011-05-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

Having to re-evaluate my plan again. My health has become a bigger problem over the last month. I am dealing with a particularly bad flair up of my IBS. In addition there have been some changes in the landscape that make for some problems with the original plan. The state of California is closing a third of the state parks. This seems to be a national trend as budgets get cut in the recession. Long story short bike camping on a large scale is not going to work out for a while. The level of medication I am taking makes me too fuzzy to write much. That and when I feel crappy I am not at my most creative. I find that becoming a bitter old man has failed to improve my mediocre talents. I have stabilized my living situation but now I need a new idea as "Unky Herb" would say. In the interim here are some local folks enjoying life to a samba beat.

Shiny Machines

2011-05-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Standing outside looking in through a crack in the redwood curtain. That is the feeling I get sometimes at some of the long running community events. It is dangerous for a misanthrope to come to think he is immune to the memes. That way there be monsters made of bias. Here be some monsters made of steel and chrome.

Part 2 30 years ago today

2011-04-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

This is the second part of a longer story part one is here
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We took pictures outside the chapel and there were lots of hugs and kisses. We were planning a reception back in town the following weekend so we all went our separate routes home not too long after the ceremony ended. The long wait with the unruly children had worn out, “them that brung em” so there was some justice that day.

Cary, Mary and I planned to drive back in the morning so we went back to the casino for dinner and drinks. The luck had shifted and now Cary couldn’t lose while I was struggling to stay even. The law of averages gets us all in the end. We ended our gambling up enough to pay for most of the trip so that was cool. Everyone jazzed we went ahead and drove back to Mary’s place in the foothills that night sparring her another frosty nights sleep.
On Sunday we picked up Cary’s kids from the babysitter and they were immediately pissed because the other kids were there. We went home and got ready for life in the married lane and work on Monday. With the both of us being sick we were not able to take any leave for a Honeymoon. We both had to be back at work at the hospital.

Cary’s folks were back on the east coast at the time in the process of selling their place to move back to California. A complicated situation I will spare you the details of. We were renting a house from her brother and they were going to be moving in with us. We went to work and thought that life was good, and it was for 5 whole days.

The morning of the first of May my new bride woke up with a splitting head ache. This was about 3 in the Am after an hour of not being able to relieve it I loaded her into the car and took he to the ER at David Grant. Little did I know at the time that this was merely the beginning of a 20 year odyssey of doctors and government bureaucracies and uncertainty on a level I can hardly believe I survived. Her blood pressure was 210/140 and the Doc thought that she was having a stroke. He ordered her intubated and when they did a crappy job of it causing her to vomit the dude thought his genius was positively prescient. They stabilized he BP with Drugs and sent her off for an emergency CT scan. This gave me a chance to run back to the house and get a hold of Frank to take care of the kids and to get into uniform to report for work.

They admitted her to intensive care and by that afternoon she was doing much better. The thinking was still stroke but the Scan had not shown a bleed. The first of many anomalous test results in a diagnostic mystery worthy of a House episode. 4 years later they would use one of the first MRI scanners on the west coast to confirm the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Along the way they would misdiagnose and miss treat quite a few ailments. The most embarrassing was a false positive Syphilis. This caused quite a bit of strife as I had been TDY for training in Texas for 3 months just prior to the test and until I tested negative my name was mud. I always held a bit of a grudge over the fact that she didn’t trust me when I didn’t jump to conclusions about her but she had been through quite a bit with dudes in the past and I like to think I made up for that for her eventually. For the record I was always faithful to my vows.
That trip to Texas was the last time we were apart for any length of time until the fiasco of the house building. I lived in a tent on the property for two months in the Washington rain while we farmed out the kids to friends and Cary stayed with her mom. I was doing a lot of labor on the building but it was in truth only supposed to be two weeks. You know how it is with contractors. At that point she was still self sufficient in the activities of daily living. That changed about a year later and then she required my care 24/7 for the last 5 years of our life together.

Our life would come to be defined by uncertainty in those years. Relapsing remitting MS is a disease that ravages the body a little bit at a time. It is an exhausting disease as your muscles work poorly with one another due to bad communication between nerve cells. This was compounded by the bureaucrats that deal with the disability insurance portion of our society as they are not very good at uncertain things. The doubt gets internalized in strange ways and now it is easy to diagnose and they even have a mildly successful treatment that was not the case until it was too late to do us any good. I always found it ironic that we were both in search of some stability and security in our decision to go into the military as a career and that is how we met.

One of the reasons I take up this tale is related to the latest round of attacks on the sick and the weakest among us as the target for all of the pain. I think for some people our constant struggle with the government to retain our health insurance and to receive even the basic insurance benefits that we had earned. We are in the process of destroying the social safety net established in the latter half of the 20th century. A safety net that is woefully inadequate and capricious. Because one doctor refused to admit he was wrong even in the face of overwhelming evidence we lost about 40 thousand dollars in benefits and lost thousands more in opportunity costs. I present this as a cautionary tale as anecdotes are just that but that is how we govern in our nation. The most compelling tale wins.

In some respects Cary was lucky with the diagnosis. Our clinic doctor figured out it was MS after only about a year of weird symptoms he called it. Unfortunately there was no definitive test. There are some people that have a protein in their spinal fluid but only a moderate percentage. Now they use magnetic resonance imaging MRI to find the plaques but that was just becoming an option and the doctor that was trying to rip Cary out of her benefit was not interested in spending the big bucks on someone he had already diagnosed as a malingerer. We forced the medical board to order the test, an advantage of reading the regulations and knowing how to use a letter to a Senator. The test showed plaques all through her brain but the scumbag doctor did not alter his summary to reflect that he was wrong. That dogged us for years and every time a reevaluation of her disability came up they used that to cut off her benefits and force us to appeal. Every other year losing a significant portion of your income for a year or 18 months can screw with your life in profound ways. Not including the time I was unable to make money taking care of her. It works to make sure you can never accumulate any wealth. Bear in mind that they were doing this to a veteran with a service connected in the line of duty disability. This looks like a good place to close an already too long piece. Thanks for reading those that stuck it out.

30 years ago today

2011-04-23T17:58:00.001-07:00

Thirty years ago today I was embarking on a new adventure that would change my life dramatically. The scar on my abdomen was just about healed but I was still pretty punk from three months of being hospitalized and not eating. The previous Halloween had seen me vomiting and convulsing every time I tried to eat something. Long about the first of the year I met Cary, a new tech on the ward and we started hanging out. When they finally cut me open and took out a few things I was pretty wasted from lying around and being shot up with all sorts of odd pain drugs. I had a tube up my nose and ate through a central line for months and aside from being freaked out from not knowing what was wrong I was horribly out of shape.
I stayed at her place instead of going to my folks place when they put me on convalescent leave after the surgery and she never let me leave. Now we were heading to South Lake Tahoe to get married. Little did I know that rather than coming out of the dark times I was heading into crazier days.
We loaded up the car with our clothes some beers and my pickle jar of “Cedar Ravine Green” and headed up highway 50 to south lake. Cary and her best friend Mary and I heading for a night of gaming and partying before the big day. Sort of a dual bachelor/bachelorette party before the big day. Yes we were young and reckless and I was sipping a beer while driving when the Highway patrol drove by the other way and freaked us out for a few miles. Like everything else that day my luck was good and the flashing lights and sirens that rent the air minutes later flew right on by to track down some other miscreants.
We stayed at a place on the California side that I had stumbled upon earlier that had two bedrooms. Not a suite but separate sleeping areas. We checked in and headed for the casinos of Nevada without really checking anything out. It never occurred to us that there would be any problems. Were we young and nieve? I guess I was but as I said luck was with us and any obstacles were still in the future. For now it was all free drinks and black jacks and a nice run at the tables. It would seem that I couldn’t lose and my winnings more than covered the ladies losses. I hate to stoop to clichés but right up until the wedding I was on a roll and afterwards couldn’t hit a lick and Cary couldn’t lose after we said our “I Do’s.”
Our night at the tables concluded we went back to our stateline honeymoon hideout for a last night of debauchery before becoming a respectable married couple. In the morning Mary emerged from the 2nd bedroom teeth chattering and lips blue as the only heater in the place was in the main room and the second bedroom was freezing. “With the noises coming from you two there was no way I was opening the door” , she said with a laugh when we asked why she didn’t come out and turn up the heat.
The big day had arrived and our simple ceremony plan was about to become a comedy of errors in a big hurry. We began by meeting my family for a nice brunch at the top of Harrah’s south lake Forrest Buffet. This was the third wedding for Cary and she was not interested in making a production out of it. She had done the big wedding and having it fail took some of the thrill out of ceremonies for her. I am just not into the rituals of property and religion that most people tend to prize, not that that makes me different from lots of men. The wedding is for the bride in our culture.
I mentioned that I had been quite ill and was on the mend but Cary had also picked up a little health issue, a time bomb was ticking that we both ignored at our peril. When as part of her training she went through a rapid decompression exercise for the Air Force and developed what was thought to be an inner ear infection. The weekend of the wedding was the first time in a long time that one of us if not both was not bent over a trash can or toilet.
We had a nice brunch even though our wishes were ignored. Both my sister and one of my aunts brought their young children. We had wanted the guest list small and no kids but my mother through a monkey wrench into that and my other aunt wanted some payback from when I was a child at her wedding. I had learned long ago that arguing with my mother was pointless. She was a selfish drama queen without equal so there was no point in hurting everyone else’s feelings. We ate and headed for the chapel.
That was when the wheels started to come off our story book love at first kiss story. It was funny the next day but at the time it was crazy. Even now I think back and smile about stopping in the turn out at the edge of town Me, my folks, my bride to be and her maid of honor smoking a huge joint of home grown sensimilla on the way to the Chapel in the Pines and a ceremony presided over by the Reverend Love.
Stoned to the bone we discovered that there was a wait at the chapel. No biggie I thought 90 minutes was not too long to wait but there was a catch. That was the only open time slot for that whole weekend and we needed a license. This was the big shock, it doesn’t work like the sitcoms where any old drunk can show up and get married. To get that license one has to go to the count seat.
We did a wild ride Mary, Cary and I over mount Rose at 100 mph to the courthouse and back making it with about 10 minutes to spare. As a cliché plot device in countless mediocre films arriving at the last minute may work but in real life it can make you crazy. Paper in hand we then went into the tackiest office of red velvet cupids and hearts to select our wedding package. Pictures, audio tapes and souvenir leatherette bibles were all on offer for a fee over and above the basic charges for the room and the Pastor. The people in line ahead of us had taken things a lot more serious then we as they had groomsmen in pastel blue tuxes and bridesmaids in the most appalling lime green dresses all holding huge bouquets of flowers. Our pictures had everyone in the wedding party, all 4 of us in dark glasses to cover our bloodshot eyes.
Some one. most likely my niece Amanda asked why her knees were shaking and then we were outside and Linda got her revenge as little Kenny pelted us with rice. All the time I was thinking how wonderfully tacky the whole event had turned out to be. This was not anything like my picture of a wedding and was not what we planned but after the terror of the flight over the mountain and the now crash from having no more adrenaline I was in a uniquely bliss filled space.
Here ends part one. If you like a happy tale this would be the place to stop as I think I have captured a little bit of the joy of the day. In part 2 reality creeps in and spoils the fairytale.

A Quantum Interlude

2011-04-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

Here is little excerpt from The Quantum Portrait of Dorian Grey for your Earth Day enjoyment.

The universe goes on just not your universe

“There is no reason to think that our technological society is going to last. We assume that it will but what is that assumption based on? This belief is the very basis of your job. Vigilance will ensure our survival. We all have bias and we all have built in flaws in our logic that we have to recognize. Your’s are preventing you from really hearing what I am saying to you. You are listening and making listening noises but you have dismissed me as crazy and are now busy thinking about disengagement.” He smiled at the man having arrived inquisitor transformed to confessor.
“I’ll give you an example. I was doing some surfing and came across something that confirmed my own bias towards experts and forced me to confront it. I encounter this type of thing all too often unfortunately. A noted popular culture elite was on about the end of evolution in humans. The man is a clever writer and seems to know a lot about physics but as a biologist he makes a good plumber.”
The agent got a puzzled look on his face at the long outdated colloquialism. “OK you have my attention. What the fuck are you talking about?”
Keith picked up the tale without missing a beat. This had been building in him for months and now it all had to come out. “I know a little about a lot of things and a lot about a few and every time some one I think knows about things ventures into the area that I know a lot about they have shown remarkable ignorance of a subject that they are speaking about. In this case a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. He was extrapolating our technological culture to the world of nature and trying to claim that selection pressures had been erased by technology. That idea alone is sort of dubious but it ignores the evidence based nature of science. Snips occur at a regular rate and these snips are the random changes in the DNA that allows for the modification in descent with modification. His statement is easy to check, is the rate of change in DNA changing in any way and is it slowing down? I can find no data to show any rate changes so he is talking out of his ass and yet has no clue that he is and so those of us with a bias toward authority tend to believe what it is they are saying. I am rambling but this is my point there is no reason to think that in a thousand years we will not be back to a culture of hunter gathering and all our tech crumbled if there are Hominids at all.
I think about my luck every day to some extent. To have lived in a time when I can read and study the great knowledge of the world from an obscure room in an obscure corner of the universe. One looks at the pattern and think it has a purpose and a direction. When the climate destabilizes to a level that much of the world becomes inhabitable what keeps society from being destroyed. I don’t want to predict a dystopian future but there is certainly no reason for it not to happen.
The reason some of those biases have hung around is that they are sometimes beneficial. When the Doctor first told me about the cameras and the whole finite number of, “Many Worlds” things my bias allowed me to listen to him and buy in. For you the crazy dude in the sewer bias is doing just the opposite.
Nick had seated himself across from the bearded man and for the first time since the dude had spoken the words, “Extra Dimensional Apocalypse” he began to pay attention to the man. Even if he was nutty as an almond joy bar he was telling the story well and this was a hell of a tale.

Make Them Pay

2011-04-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

Spent Tax Day 2011 with a few hundred kindred spirits in front of the now defunct branch of Bank of America asking the question why are the corporations getting a pass? They make obscene profits investing money they borrow from the federal reserve at virtually zero interest and pay little or no taxes. When the wingers propose a flat tax if they imposed it on everyone equally with no deductions I would go for it. That is not their intent of course. They want to exempt capital gains and businesses from taxation all together. I was expecting to see a few of the Tea bag folks that were screaming about deficits and taxes last year but that group seems to have disappeared from the landscape. Any way I did see some new faces and the folks from Moveon.org got both radio and TV to show up. The Weather was nice for a change, sunshine an no wind. Every one was in a good mood and as one person said "It was a great day for a protest."

Blood and Orchids Eureka style.

2011-04-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

Went out riding along the waterfront on a wan Saturday to see what spring hath wroth. Gherry trees and war machines and orchids all in a row.

Emotions 11

2011-04-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

When much of your life is dark it is easy to go to the dark side emotionally. More like when you try to look at true emotions you tend to go bleak. I cannot claim any great art in my works. I have a good eye for photos but not the dedication to selling shit. I enjoyed the glass making but the hauling around and selling killed my back while we were doing it. That was not particularly fulfilling artistically anyway, grinding out trinkets for the crap collectors is in the end soul killing. The consumer society we have created is going to fail. Not in my lifetime but I am not going to be around that much longer, 20 years if I am extremely lucky.
The two Americas is a reality that most folks don’t want to deal with. I have already failed financially so it doesn’t matter to me in the end. I am of a status that they cannot cut off completely as a veteran in the system. As long as I can stay out of prison the plutocrats are stuck with me. I am angry but not, “mad bomber” crazy so odds favor freedom for the long haul.
It is that anger at the system that I am no longer going to indulge. I need to try and put some serious effort in to finishing one of my literary projects. I do not feel very well at the moment, lots of pain in the joints and short of breath do to being way too heavy. For the first time though I am free of other peoples problems. This is I feel a last shot. I have staved off homelessness for the short run and can ride and write for a while with a bit of security. So I am giving the political ranting up and making another run at disciplined work.
This brings me back to the dark side of my emotions. The Socrates code is of a lighter mood and even though it is further along I feel that working on the Quantum Portrait project will bear more fruit. I find that the only way to get better is to write more and so if I beat the funk I may switch back. On the days that I can’t find the hole I have a travel project that I wish to work on. A photo diary of the Redwood National Parks trip. This is a test project of sorts. Can I generate a travel project that I can sell? Can I find an outlet to sell it through. The blog deal has eluded me. I had google ads but never made any money from it. When I was starting to generate hits they yanked my account and I never got a good explanation as to why but that is the new media. Slave labor under the guise of open source. The only people I know making money are selling naked pictures and they are for the most part scraping by on pretty thin margins.

Clown or criminal that is the question?

2011-04-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

My level of dissatisfaction with the executive branch of the current government is no secret. Once the O man signed on to the Bush war crimes I could never in good conscience vote for him again. That leaves me with a minor problem. I will vote for the inevitable obscure democrat that may make it to the primary ballot or try to pump up the Greens in June. The problem lies in the general as the alternative party has the batshit crazy competing with the pure evil.
The campaign fund raising season has already arrived and the Far right are speaking to the hicks in Iowa. I actually know some folks that live in that state and they are nice enough. I just want to live in an actual free society one day governed by the rule of law and elected democratically. I know that is a delusion but we are closer than 60 years ago so continuing to work in that direction is not completely insane. George was right about the scraps that we get to fight over are just that, but they are also the difference between crappy jobs and serfdom.
The god squad is dangerous to the health of society. Obama doubling the money for the faith clowns is another in a long list of poor policy decisions. That is nothing compared to the kind of crazy that eye of Newt is selling. As an adulterous piece of trash his only hope to get around the rubes is to go all super christy I have sinned but I believe in the forgiveness of Jebus. He may be a true believer, they shit all over everyone they can and then pray when they get caught. As they follow the one true god they are chosen and since the novel they follow is so archaic and poorly written they can twist pretty much any kind of bullshit they choose to out of it. Either way he is now pushing some new version of manifest destiny and the founding fathers were all about the god nonsense. That and only the religious and only a those that follow “true religion”, can be real Americans. It works on the lizard brains of the masses they say.
The next group of dingbats vying for the Rethug mantle are the get rich running folks. Sarah Palin, Mike Huckleberry and Mitt Romney. All are running for the next reality show and to get rich. Michele Bachman is another member of this crowd but her actual position as an elected official limits her earning power if not her psychotic ravings.
The BP disaster seems to have cooled out Jindal from the bayou. There are some other governors in the running Pawlenty or Kasich and Barbour but they have no charisma and thus no shot.
In conclusion we can be ruled by the know nothings or sell out scum. Not a very appealing choice.

In the case of Ellsberg and Asange I see the need for exposing secrets of governments. It is never in the interest of the democratic electorate for the government to lie to the populace. They serve the public good by exposing those deceits. I do not see how the publishing of private medical records serves any public good. If you are doing this as an attempt to be a cool anarchist type you suck even more. Fuck with the corporations all you want but don’t pick on the vulnerable in society to demonstrate your awesome cleverness.

Blame it on the Bossa nova

2011-04-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

There is a disturbing meme running through the lamestream media that an idiot fundie preacher in Florida is the sole reason that rioters in Afghanistan went crazy and slaughtered some UN aid workers. News of a Quran burning led them to murderous rampage. Of course it is working wonders with the sheep that inhabit the bloggosphere. Ignore the photos of American soldiers posing with their murder victims. Ignore the soldiers defiling the bodies of pregnant women shot down by soldiers in an attempt to dig out the bullets and blame the Taliban. Ignore the chopper pilots shooting down children gathering firewood and the bombing of weddings. Ignore the spy caught shooting down people in broad daylight and exert a claim of diplomatic immunity. Keep a corrupt government in place to steal the humanitarian aid.
No need to look at the utter failure that is the US military it is the fault of a lone idiot in Florida that Afghanistan is a disaster. The sell job has been much too easy as those on the left hate the fundies and will seize on any opportunity to ridicule them. The wing nuts think all Muslims are savages that will riot at the drop of a burqa and this feeds that meme perfectly. The Bush revisionists and the military industrial complex try to claim that if we get out the “Women” will suffer at the hands of the Islamist Fundies.
If we want to live in a world that has reactionaries flooding the streets in murderous rampages keep bombing their wives and children and blame it on a book burning 2000 miles away.

Mundane Monday

2011-03-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

After spending the weekend complaining about the governments propensity to kill living things of all persuasions and species I checked back in to the mundane business of day to day life. Had to pay some bills, hit the bank and swap my cable box for one that works. Well I am hoping it works, with the suddenlame folks one never can be sure.

As the missals fly in Libya I am hoping for the best but expecting the worst. It only took 1 day for the Arab league to throw us under the bus. It is possible that they thought that a no fly zone would be like Top Gun and we would send up a bunch of planes and prevent the Colonel from sending up his planes. That is not how it is done. We first blow up all the air defenses we can find. Then we blow up what we call, "command and control" which is a catch all for any kind of communications system in the theater of operation. Then and only then do they send in the aircraft.

The news media are reporting that the bodies at some of the sites were taken from the morgues to claim civilian casualties. The possibility that they are collateral damage seems as likely to be true. When our troops have dug the bullets out of the bodies of pregnant women to claim they were killed by insurgents they do not have a lot of credibility. I find it telling that the oil producers are worthy of intervention once again while the rest of the continent can have any number of atrocities.

I like to think that we are pure in our motives and that we will not get dragged in to another sectarian disaster. I just don't have any faith in the folks running things at the moment to make the right decision. All of the cheerleaders for this adventure are the same folks that ginned up the Iraq war and they are using the same justification that they eventually settled on to justify that disaster.

Peace at the Pier

2011-03-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

spent the day holding down the right rear corner of the canopy at the F street pier in Eureka. The wind howled and the rain poured and the Pa system played some killer whale song before Jack and Jan and the "Angry Grannies" fired up the crowd. The rain stopped after about an hour and a half and we got a little sun along with an earful about the war, the Navy and their war on marine mammals. The folks were a little angry about the war in Libya that we started this morning with the sending of 110 cruise missals at anti aircraft facilities that might be used against? I am hoping that this exercise goes like Bosnia and not like every other, (Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Somalia, Yemen) intervention in the region. I worry when the Republicans are on the side of France.

Not just the usual suspects

2011-03-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

Went down to the courthouse today to show a little Solidarity with the Union folks. Move-on organized the rally and members of the nurses and teachers unions were there as well as the veterans for peace. The Move-on folks brought out some new faces as well as the usual lefties like myself. The rain was intermittent intense showers and wind but the stoic crowd didn't seem to mind.
After a moment of silence to remember the people suffering in Japan a few speakers talked about a progressive agenda to combat the problem of the recession that is causing so much suffering in this country. The calls were for an end to the war on public sector workers. No more cuts to education or women's health care. Instead we want an end to the wars and higher taxes on the rich. Ending corporate person-hood and the investment in infrastructure required to provide good jobs for middle class Americans.

Tired

2011-02-28T12:07:00.000-08:00

The past few weeks have been trying times for my fragile nerves. I am not good at waiting for things to happen. I have been avoiding thinking by way of distractions but that isn't a viable long run position. The new place is working out alright. I still want to know what the deal with the place over the fish restaurant was? It still looks vacant almost a month after they said it was rented. Found out that they have not held Don's service yet. Not too surprised but it has been 2 months now and finality has an appeal not to be overlooked. I am trying to maintain the early to rise rhythm I developed while camping. I have been getting out on the bike most dry mornings and walking in the early evening before retiring. Looking for a routine to fall into for a short time. A little rebounding pause. I have one big hurdle remaining and that is to move my stuff. The draining of my financial reserves aside I have just not been physically up to it. Enough complaining for one day, a nonessential update from the frivolous world of the intertubes.

DistractInk Hearts

2011-02-14T15:53:00.000-08:00

Spent an exhausting three days taking in the sights and sounds of Inked Hearts Expo 2011. Had fun for the first time in a long time. Did not get any ink. Finances being what they are I decided to wait. My art work is still down in storage so it would have been problematic even if I had found someone that made my skin itch.
Here is an update on the Humboldt Pin-Up Calendar Girl contest with the Day 3 preliminaries followed by the finals. The winners announcement is in the video at the end.
I entered my leg and back in the contest. The money was for charity, (Breast Cancer Research) and I enjoy showing off my ink on occasion. Thanks to Chris Taylor for the shots of me on stage. Many more of my pictures are available for viewing on my Flikr stream and I started a group “Inked Hearts 2011” on Flikr with the highlights. And the Radmul channelhas more Video.

Contest Updates

2011-02-13T10:59:00.000-08:00

Last years Pin-up winner.

Day 2 Tat of the day,best portrait and best color tattoo were held last night, and the winners are...

And a video of the day 1 Pin-up Girls preliminaries winners.

Inked Hearts Can't be Broken

2011-02-12T16:31:00.001-08:00

The Inked Hearts expo also had a contest to help choose models for the next Humboldt Pin-Up Girls Calender. Here are the day 2 contestants. part of the proceeds from the sales goes to charities combating violence against women and the winning model gets $200.

Blue Lake Ink

2011-02-12T09:27:00.001-08:00

The tattoo nation was populated with open minded accepting people. That is what drew me into the culture. People of any race, age, body type and philosophy are welcome to come and parade their art.That was on display at the Blue Lake Rancheria with the Valentine expo. Day one gave me some great photos and sore feet. enjoy a little fresh ink.

It isn't ironic.

2011-02-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

A few years back Alanis Morissette captured the zeitgeist with her tune, "Isn't it Ironic?" Turns out no, her lament was just a laundry list of bummers missing irony completely but capturing the new definition of the word to a tee.

In the past few months I have lost two people very close to me at different ends of the age spectrum and thinking about their plights put me on to the question Isn't that ironic.

Lois and Don Had similar health problems in their circulatory systems and reacted differently to the lifestyle changes that scientific medicine recommends with dramatically different outcomes. Don Quit smoking, changed his diet and added exercises to his daily routine when ever possible. Lois continued to smoke 2 packs a day, eating the Pennsylvania Dutch cooking and sedentary life style without missing a beat.

Don died at 55 while Lois made it to just shy of 90.

The Hillsdale

2011-02-02T12:21:00.000-08:00

The cruel tendrils of winter smacked me in the night. Frost on the tent and Ice so thick I had to chip it off the windows of the car.Was not to bad in the bag but when the need to pee finally drove me out there was no going back. I recommend the Exped air mattress for keeping you protected from the ground chill.Would have taken some pictures but the batteries in the camera froze.

Found a place to lay up for the winter. The Hillsdale bldg, has a sordid past and a decidedly seedy present. Built in the 1920's my place has huge windows, a claw foot bathtub and a Murphy bed. A place straight out of a Dashiell Hammett noir film. A place Sefton could have could have called home. I pick up the keys on Friday. (Link to "The Black Mina" NSFW)

I Had a Point When I Started

2011-01-31T10:21:00.000-08:00

Sitting above the waves watching the bold ply their skills and the vigorous run along the cliffs I regret my time sequestered from the world that has been this past year.

I find myself thinking dark thoughts and so I am leaving the edge and heading down to the sand and what the new tides will bring. Not cool when the ledge starts to look like a reasonable option.

I find I am unable to release my anger. Impotent rage is the most useless of emotions. "Hate him back", doesn't work for me as I don't believe in "Him", in the first place. It serves no purpose to rage at the Medical Machine. The one doctor's incompetence cost a week of delay at the surgical clinic but didn't alter the outcome in any significant way. The Hospice and their half assed work while the celebrated the birth of Jebus or the death of the year or whatever fetivus they partook of did make the events more traumatic but again altered the outcome not one wit. Family tantrums and hasty decisions take no heed of my anguish as does evolution and its' creation of the oncogenes in the first place.

This most useless of pastimes creeps into my thoughts in idle times when the wind and the the rain are stealing my sleep and the cold grinds into my joints.

Random Quarks

2011-01-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

The days have sucked the confidence from my marrow. I have spent a bit of time thinking about luck. “You make your own luck”, the spew of the privileged can be heard amongst the reeds. The reality is that the universe is just a dice game. The meaning in life comes from within, not imposed from some dictator in the sky but how one reacts to the strong interaction of quarks. We live with the illusion of free will side by side with the realization that quantum fluctuations could destroy the present reality in the blink of an eye.

How do I explain the lack of, “Truth Justice and the American way”, I don’t I do what the rest of the world does, I create an illusion I can live with. A story that allows me to go on without taking the short walk over to madness. When the pattern will not hold at the center I add another twist, or I don’t. I let this be the world that falls through the cracks and lands on the dustbin of the many worlds. There is no particular reason that I should be untouched by the fate storm that has struck down those around me. In an age that has an average life expectancy in the 70’s why are my entire circle dead well before 60. As the center of my own universe I am seeing a pattern that defies the odds but in reality the sample is too small and I am excluding those that live on.

The story that follows is as random as any that one may encounter and I will endeavor to lay bare as much of my reality as I am able, the question of how real that truly is will be up to you gentle reader. I hope you enjoy the escape.

Moving becomes a way of life. In the first 5 years of school we moved at least once every year. Before starting school there were an equal number of moves that I can remember but they do not stand out in my mind as much. Always being the new kid is not a unique experience I am sure. The only thing I am sure about it is that it sucked. Always having to make new friends by the time you get to junior high you are an outcast. That feeling began when in the 4th grade I was put into a special class for the “accelerated student”. Prior to that the kids had let me drift into and out of groups without much grief. As when I finished high school there was no money for further education the move fucked up my life with very little reward.

Being different is not necessarily an advantage in life. We are a social animal and being outside the herd informs the development of your skills. I developed the skills to negotiate with the unknown and the ability to fake things in many different social situations. The road to freakdom is paved with minor insults and slights that accumulate over the years like lime scale from calcified water. One day you wake up and the rest of the world is out of your reach. Normality is just over the horizon but you can’t walk in a straight line.

The travels and camping idea is not dead but will require refinement. In the next few days I will endeavor to rent a studio or 1 bedroom and will venture forth on the bike when the weather permits. This will require more planning in advance more distance research but in the end should work out to be as much fun. I am just not cut out to be homeless I guess. Always the catch 22, until I can generate some income from the writing being on the road full time is cost prohibitive while not being on the road makes it harder to generate interesting content.

Cold Water

2011-01-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

Heading back to the beach tomorrow after one last night at the Inn. Bathroom ceiling was dripping yesterday and the came in and patched it. Spent the evening at the Mormon church for The Taylor family baptism. In the real world even when your friends do something odd it is nice to try and be supportive. It is a nice group of people and I hope it gives the kids what they are looking for but I doubt it. The water was evidently too cold for Taloura's taste and the Stepford kind of smiles on the faces of some of the folks was a little creepy. I was polite and sat quietly while they talked about the power of their magic and such. Kept thinking about the Southpark episode with the family that tries to recruit Stan and his family. If they were not such homophobic misogynists I guess it would sit better but as my life is not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment it seemed a bad time to give advice.

Beach Eye Opener

2011-01-21T16:10:00.000-08:00

The week at the beach was an eye opener. My joints are not up to winter camping. That was just the beginning of some things I had to face. The car runs up the cost of sites dramatically. $35 a night for tent space works out to $1000 a month. That is more than I was paying for a two-bedroom apartment and beyond the budget for the start up. The state has raised the fees, to help with the budget shortfall I guess. I liked the distraction free environment that camping provided even under the harsh weather conditions but I slept poorly. When the wind is bending the tent pole down and bouncing it off your head it tends to keep you awake.

In addition to the higher fees the services have gone to the dogs. The showers were only working one day out of seven and every morning the toilet was backed up. I have been pretty bummed and starting each day that way was disheartening in the extreme. As a result I am looking for a place to rent. Looked at the outside of a few places and then had to turn in an application to get in to look at the inside of one of them. I went dyslexic on the new phone number so I may have wasted 2 days on that one. It is a unique looking space from the pictures but I want to see the loft before I decide. The places I looked at in old town, 1 rented and the other is not yet vacant. The one was above a restaurant and that would have been cool but it was already gone.

My skills have eroded more with the years and it seems harder and harder to conform to the rules. Have been unable to complete the car paperwork and hence needed to stay in Eureka for a bit longer. Rented a weekly room to try and recover a bit physically at the Royal Inn. Will try to recover over the weekend and go at it again Monday.

The plan will now have to be modified depending on what type of place I end up getting but will be traveling and camping with the bike only and when the weather improves.

Doubt creeps in

2011-01-20T09:39:00.000-08:00

The last couple of nights camping have been tough.My medical situation has flared up and between the cramps and the spasms I am not sure if I am coming or going. The pain is stalking me at every turn and I am not sure I am up to the fight. Found a place to stay in doors for a week to make some inquiries and review the plan. Looked at a couple of places just not sure what to do at this point. The experts say not to make a decision in the aftermath of tragedy but most people don't have the luxury of waiting.One last thing Flush The Damn Toilet!

A photo interlude

2011-01-18T13:04:00.000-08:00

Not much to say today so here are some pictures.

Stormy Night At the Spit

2011-01-17T12:38:00.001-08:00

The first night in the new tent was a true adventure. Set up camp about 4:30 and got inside before the storm broke. Wind and rain howled most of the night and I only had to add stakes once. Stayed dry although it was pretty cool outside the sleeping bag. The Coleman heater warmed things up for getting in and out of the bag and getting dressed but I don’t run it when I am asleep per the instructions. The ride up made for a tough day. Up at 7 moving the last of my stuff to storage before loading the car and doing a final cleaning.

I held it together pretty well until was turning in the keys to the place. When they asked about Don and I gave some details I broke down and for the whole drive my emotions were raw and as I headed north the tears flow on occasion.

Stopped along the way to take a few pictures and Anoria kept running through my mind. Escaping to the realm of fantasy has healed me in the past. When I returned from caring for the old man I almost didn’t make it. Went a little crazy in the desert with heat when the transmission died in Texas. By the time I made it back to the north I had some form of respiratory infection that gave me a Pink Floyd fever. When the fever broke I wrote and wrote and that brought me back to sanity. I hope for that same type of healing this trip. Even though the move to the valley was expensive and ruptured a disc I am still glad we did it. The lost coast still is free of the taint of sadness that pervades so many other places.

The Next day has been dry and mild. I was out on the bike in the early sun and rode for an hour covering just less than 10 miles. My fitness is abysmal and the idea that I could ride back in to shape in a week was delusional to the max. I am riding another split in the afternoon and doing a lot of walking on the beach but a month is more realistic. The Samoa spit is a quiet little camp space to operate from. With the exception of the first nights windstorm it has been raining off and on but scattered showers are not that big a deal when the wind isn’t blowing fifty miles an hour.

The county park system has gone down hill over the last year I am sorry to have to report. The showers are out for the weekend. The people have forgotten how to flush a toilet it would seem. This is mostly the day users but not cool at all. Prices are moderate, $20 a night for a vehicle, $8 for bike in with a discount for veterans the disabled and seniors over 62.

The Adventure Begins

2011-01-13T13:34:00.000-08:00

Coming to a close

2011-01-09T12:17:00.000-08:00

Went out to Travis AFB and renewed my Id card. Wanted to be sure my medical eligibility was up to date before I became homeless. Doing all the tasks that modern society deems so necessary and have become huge pains in the rear.

There has been a change in initial destination possibly. Trying to do everything above board has caused the vehicle transfer to become a cluster fuck. I should have just called as Don and gotten the payoff and sent them a check. Because I was honest I have to wait for death certificates and lawyers before cutting them a check. As a result I may need to travel to Eureka next week to transact everything. If I do I will stay for a while and see some friends and familiar haunts.

I am thinking about staying out on the Samoa spit for a week and getting my bike legs back. Haven’t ridden much in the last few months and some conditioning is in order. Also working the bugs out of my system in a familiar environment seems like a good idea. I can take some of the old games up to Kay and Chris so there is that benefit as well.

Half Moon Baked

2011-01-02T17:29:00.000-08:00

The care giving is finished and I am beginning to work on the 5.3 project. I am going to get back to the ocean and begin with Half Moon Bay . I have about 10 days of this and that to clean up the apartment and finish a few of Don’s affairs. When that is finished I think the water would be a good place to start. I will be going in the winter months so they allow for up to 14 nights of camping.

A New Years Day

2011-01-01T22:47:00.000-08:00

Had the last tough day. It is the beginning of the new year and Don has drifted into a coma. Around 2 in the afternoon of New Years Eve the hallucinations got the better of him and he could not catch his breath. He began with agonal breathing and became more and more agitated. For a little over an hour he was leaning over my shoulder with the oxygen on 8 while he gasped for air. Heavy doses of liquid morphine and Thorazine eventually calmed his fears but left him expended. That hour of terror drove what was left of the essential Donness out of him. We saw in the new year with the arrival of lorazepam from the on call nurse. Would have been nice if we had it earlier as it was prescribed but never delivered. The outcome was not going to be altered perceptibly but it left us all with a devastating memory of suffering. He still had some core strength, I could feel it with the last transfer, weak and thready but still present.
That core ebbed away as the sun passed to the west and when the end came we were alone. The others were off resting or smoking and one last deep gasp ended my friends ordeal. I will think of Don often in the future but I will try to forget these last few days.

Cruisin on a winter afternoon

2010-12-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

Took a ride down memory lane today. Drove by the California Maritime Academy and out by the old C&H sugar factory over in Crockett. Took some photos and talked about the old times. Went by the motel that the Dman and his bride first stayed in when they began the great adventure that was the Navy and moving cross country. Lake Chabot has become a 6 flags amusement park and the spot that at different times we both fished for stocked trout in the summers of our youth is no more. There is a new second bridge all concrete and asphalt with a $5 toll as opposed to the 45cents of my high school days. That Erector set iron construct still functioning for east bound traffic is much more interesting architecturally. The wind was thundering off the straights biting cold, piercing to the bone and charging the brain with a million volts.
Probably the last ride out but a good one.

End Times

2010-12-27T19:57:00.000-08:00

I have never seen a disease process advance so quickly. My friend is beginning to loose clarity. When he is lucid he is pretty clear that he wants to stay west and ride out the days. Then he is sure that he wants to fight and move. His oldest sister is trying to run his life and there has begun the clash of wills. Unfortunately Don’s will has been sapped by the cancer and the drugs and he has no chance against the forces that are arrayed against him.

I am tracking down the equipment and trying to get the momentum of a bureaucratic monolith to shift just a few inches to the left. I am drained by the by play of control freaks and the passive aggressive. Doctors that want to appear compassionate then when you call them they have their staff give you the runaround. Not charting an intravenous line is a pretty serious fuck-up so don’t piss and moan when I make you look up something that should already be there.

The holiday season is an excuse for people to screw off and blame the holiday. 5 days it has taken to get them to flush the IV that we didn’t need or want. The are not giving and have no plans to give medication through it so it is just another energy sink that we don’t need. We are behind the curve and it is not likely that we are going to catch up no matter how fast we dance. In the day we take to alter the plan it becomes obsolete.

The morning gave a little hope, we went for a ride and for about an hour and a half things were cool. I am now a little leery of him seeing another day.

A Little Zombie Jazz From The Not So Grimm Reaper

2010-12-25T12:46:00.000-08:00

There is an art to helping a person to die well. I think it is one of my few actual skills. I liken it to composing jazz. One takes the underlying structures,
instruments and the tones they create with the music, medicines for the person and
then blend an escape. Today I am weaving a tapestry of morphine and Ondansetron with Gabapentin and Oxycodone to enable Don to be pain free yet still converse with his visitors.
Trying to find the right smells and textures for a person to eat when they have no appetite or when the yeasts and fungi have clouded the palette is another challenge. Tonight I am going to make a roast with potatoes and English peas but I suspect that Don will probably go for another cup’o noodles. Lots of sodium and msg but it is something he can taste and still swallow comfortably.
The texture of food is another aspect of the composition that matters more as taste buds fail and the sense of smell fades. The other measure, the minor counter balance is to know when not to force food. You are not going to build up their strength that way and you may do more harm both by guilt and by too much gas.
We are fighting the swelling of ankles today striking a balance between elevating feet and sitting up to be alert. Trying to walk a bit each day to keep the joints supple and knowing when that walk causes more distress than relief.
It is an arrangement I have rewritten many times but it never seems to get any easier to hear the tune played or to pay the piper.

If you don’t have any real hope…

2010-12-21T21:09:00.000-08:00

Today was supposed to be day 1 of a 21 day course of Chemotherapy. On Friday we saw the doctor and they laid out the program. Don went off to visit with some friends for the weekend but by Monday morning he couldn’t breath and was back in the ER.

The cancer has now metastasized to his pericardium and possibly to the heart muscle itself. “Multiple poorly focused lesions”, was how the doctor put it. They do not think he would get any benefit from chemo and he was too sick to withstand the drugs side effects anyway. “They have given up on me” was how Don put it.

We spent the day talking to various social workers and the palliative care specialist Dr. Ali, A very caring woman that helped lay out the options for pain relief as well as some new medicines to treat the nausea. We had to redo the living will paperwork as for some reason it was not on file and call various and sundry relatives and friends. All in all another really crappy day.

When you don't have any real hope a little false might just get you by. Que the Rally Hamster.

Too Many Cooks ....

2010-12-19T11:41:00.000-08:00

We have a treatment plan now, finally. In terms of final outcome the month spent fucking around with the diagnosis means nothing but it would have been nice to start the palliative care sooner. Enough bitching about the unchangeable let us move on to the next move. A 21 day course of chemo with 7 days off. He will get the Gemcitabine. On day 1,8 and 16 then sees the doctor on day 21. The next week is the off week so it is then that We will get Don moved back east.
In the interim I am calling to make the arrangements and gathering the records he will need. We will need to go to the SFVA one more time to pick up a disc of his films and I have one more contact to make on Monday.
I am also continuing with the move and that is part of the problem. The Doctor does not want him to travel in the middle of the treatment. That means leaving here the 14 of January after his last appointment and starting the 2nd course in Jackson a week later. Unfortunately because we got pushed into trying to move before Christmas we will be homeless on the 12th. Now I have to clean and move everything in two days instead of two weeks and I am somewhat pissed about it. Then the shit I busted ass to get ready for B&M to ship didn’t get shipped so I had to drag it back home and now will be doing that too. Lots of people making decisions and nobody else actually following up on anything leaving it not just undone but fucked up.
On A positive note I found a nice Coleman tent at a great price at the Sports Authority. I have been researching tent heaters and have chosen this one that I can get at the local Sport Chalet but I am going to wait and see if they have an after Xmas sale.
Thanks for reading the rants, good to have an outlet to scream at.

My Chemotherapy Romance

2010-12-16T14:20:00.000-08:00

Thought it might be time to update the battle. We are trying to build Don up enough to take a course of Gemcitabine. This newest drug for treating pancreatic cancer will with luck provide a little improvement. The drug interrupts the cell division cycle by replacing one of the Base pairs in Dna and in Rna. Tumor cells are actively replicating more than most normal cells in your body so they will be disrupted more. Unfortunately the lining of the intestinal tract also has rapidly dividing cells in normal circumstances so nausea and constipation, already a serious problem may get worse.

We have been succeeding in regulating the pain meds to some extent and he is feeling better as long as we can keep the intestinal track moving.

I have been swamped with the details of moving out of the place and taking Don back to live with his family. The U-haul storage facility is clean and climate controlled so I am moving my art, books and photo albums over now and will move the furniture after Don gets on a plane. I will then clean out and close up the place before heading east to join him.

The timing could not be much worse for beginning my journey but the timing is always bad when a disaster happens. Driving cross country in the middle of winter is a bit dicey and I am not looking forward to it. I think Don is counting on me to keep his sister from controlling him too much so it is important that I get there in a reasonable time frame.

If he can take the first treatment tomorrow we will have a better idea where we will be going next. I fear that if he can’t start he will begin to give up. To the patient all will eventually be revealed

Redemption in the Third Act.

2010-12-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Reinvention is the great American Idea. We love a comeback in the third act more than any other culture. In that vein I am giving some more thought to my next act.

Living well is a relative term. For me it is more than creature comforts and extravagant entertainments. It is living by an ethical and moral standard. I have not always succeeded but I have tried.
I lack the talent to write fiction and am too lazy to write nonfiction. The travel Idea works well for me. The thing I need to work out is mail and an address. The first place I think I will do is the Point Reyes area. The other possibility is the San Diego area if the weather is still cold. What I am thinking is that I can create a review of an area and an article that would have some market value. I want to bike camp and the unique factor will be the biking aspect. Pick a spot, set up a good route for moderate riders to enjoy for a week of vacation. The types of things I will include are of course restaurants, camp grounds and local attractions but also bike repair shops, places to park your vehicle or ways to get to the spot with your bike and gear on common carrier or public transportation. I can include reviews of equipment and post those reviews on sites that sell my gear to drive blog traffic. The open questions that I will have to answer is can I stay on the road all of the time. I may need to hole up in the winter and how hard will that be to find decent places for short term at a price I can afford. I anticipate it taking 6 to 8 months before I begin to see any return. Other possible revenue streams can be selling Photo’s. selling blog ads if I can begin to generate traffic.

Keeping my medicine filled. Keeping the mail and bills paid. These are the big problems with the travel. When I tried to do this type of walkabout before those were elements that fucked up on a regular basis.

As to my previous trip I am armed with new technology and less funding by far. The motor home was nice for the comfort but sucked the life out of things with the costs. That and there are RV people and I am not one of them. They are a nice group but they are for the most part older and much more conservative than I am. And I was in my 40’s during that trip. I am more liberal now if that is possible even though I have closed the age gap.

My original plan to bike across country may still happen but I need to get in much better shape again before trying it. I am going to have to put some planning time in and check my equipment.
I think I will write more this time, can’t say it will be better as some of the stuff on that trip was good. Just failed to finish any of it. I was always more productive when out alone during that time anyway. After Rick died Don quit any pretense of writing anyway. What might have been, a sad phrase.

The worst day of your life

2010-12-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

Having been around the medical business for most of my adult life as a consumer and provider of services I have seen far too many folks have to confront the Big C. It always sucks. Bummed that Don got stuck in the hospital after being hit with such tough news. I am not a big fan of the number range because they are probabilities that can become an enforced reality but this doctor was very good about not giving hard numbers . Tell someone they have 3 months to live and sometimes they give up at the three month mark. Dr. Pai did make it clear that this was an end game strategy session but what he hoped was the first of a few rather than the last.

“A tragic life”, that is how his sister described Don’s situation. Orphaned at 10, his wife dead from an accident and poor medical skills at a country hospital. A massive heart attack a few years later followed by an aneurysm and now pancreatic cancer. In between he lost his brother Rickey to a logging accident and suffered through osteoporosis.

Sucks to be the one losing all their friends to death but it sucks more to be dead. That is the limit of tonight’s profundity I am afraid. I have tried to live as well as I can for as long as I can and have endeavored to help those around me do the same. In a few months I will be the last of my tribe. More to follow in the days ahead.
The Image is from the Huffington post but I have lost the link to the original creator and for that I apologize.

The sword of Damocles

2010-12-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

Friday we are heading to the oncology department for the plan of action. Based on what I have been able to figure out the options are bad and badder, worse and worser. Doesn’t matter how you slice it Stage 4 pancreatic cancer is terminal and as fast as my friend is fading I am thinking the short end of the range is in his future. They started to talk to him about treatment while he was in the hospital and when the options sounded pretty poor he shut them off. It is not my place to tell him that 6 months from now there is 99% probability that he will no longer exist. I am going to let the doctor deliver that blow.

I am going to enjoy the brief respite before the blow is struck. Don is visiting with his sister today and she is helping him pick up some new slippers and Pjs. Friday will come soon enough and tough choices will wait a few more days.

We were in Sacramento for an Xray and then tried a foot-long chili dog from Sonic. It was one of those disappointing moments that always happens when a franchise doesn’t translate to a new location. Two bites and D was done for the day. Shame, as when we were down in the south the Conney dogs were quite tasty.

Did not bring the camera and was immediately sorry. The Sierra Nevada were dusted with snow and the smog in the valley was rained away enough to see them. A rare and wondrous thing to lighten the day. If it happens again I will try to capture the look but will fail to convey the emotion it evokes.

Prognosis Negative

2010-12-02T23:12:00.000-08:00

Was not able to find the clip of the episode that Elaine forced Jerry to see the horrible film of my title for the second time but enjoy "Death Blow"

Don’t quite know How much of what is going on to share with the world. It is egotistical to think anyone is remotely interested in our little travails. I must have that level of ego as I continue to write with little regard as to the number of readers. For those following along at home Don got conformation that he has pancreatic cancer this week. He has gone from disabled to helpless in about 5 weeks so I am not very optimistic. I have tried to be positive for Don and there are improvements in treatment but with liver mets the prognosis is pretty fucked. He has been in denial through the whole process and I see no reason at this point to burst his bubble.

It is rather odd to me that in an age when the prevailing meme is that we are not exposed to death that I am and have been around so much. Had to tell Don’s sister that they were not offering surgery as the cancer has metastasized to the liver already. Pancreatic tends to get diagnosed late and that leads to the poor outcomes but D had been avoiding going to the doctor hoping that his problems would go away for way too long. It is always better to start treatment early. Not Going To The Doctor Because You Are Afraid Of The Answer Will Kill You!!!!!!

I do see one big improvement in the treatment of pain from the physicians. The suffering builds character bullshit is gone.

I am pretty bummed at this point in the process. Don is hospitalized with pneumonia and is having to face his lack of options. I am beginning to run down from the work load and the stress. Watching a friend go through something no one does well is no fun but if you care about others sometime you just have to suck it up and help them best you can.

Radmul version 5.3

2010-11-20T11:18:00.000-08:00

The world is about to take one of those monumental shifts. Everything is about to move six inches to the left all at once. 124,000 people die in accidents every year in the US. Those people’s orbits shift faster but not generally any further.

In assessing this shift I am forced to confront past decisions and how they worked out long term. I am not going to bail, that is not my style. I do need to make a plan quickly and first up I need to start getting rid of stuff.

I have another attempt to make. I tried to do this with 5.0, My virtual midlife crisis and again with 5.2, the move to the valley. This 5.3 version may have some profit potential. What I will produce might have an actual market.

People that have jobs get limited vacation time. Cross country trips while novel are not realistic for most people. Spending 5 to 7 days riding around an area camping and cycling is. I will go to a tourist destination; the Napa Valley, the Carmel Monterrey Bay area or a national park. Spend time investigating and exploring then design trips for biking vacations.

I will create a website and solicit camping and biking ads as well as creating a weekly pod cast and travel articles that have sales potential.

I will take photos and review the eateries. I will find the local bike shops and other types of shopping. Search out and find the bike friendly places to stay and camp. In addition I will explore the ways to get to the destinations with bike and gear by car and by public transportation and by common carriers.

Lois is no more

2010-11-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

She died on October 28th at the age of 85.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus was always hit and miss with me but they got the death part right.

I meant to get this up on the 17th , her birthday but I was tied up with another visit to the VA.

This is shaping up to be a bad year for my ever shrinking circle of friends and relatives. Kenny’s recovery is still iffy as he is having trouble maintaining enough weight to deal with his treatment. Don is having severe intestinal problems that is looking a lot like pancreatic cancer and Lois is no more.

When does ceasing to exist become preferable to continuing. Lois made that choice when she decided that she did not wish to take treatment for the Lung cancer. It might have been better for her if Mike and Frank had not taken her to the hospital When she was in distress the last time. Quick and clean can be better than lingering but they were not ready to deal with the reality.

I have missed talking with Lois these last few years but I tuned out the unhappy and there wasn’t much else left. When she could no longer make it to the bingo games it was no longer worth being in pain all the time. Coffee, Bingo and Cigarettes were her three remaining pleasures. The doctors hounded her for years and she refused to quit smoking. Lung cancer got her in the end and I am somewhat surprised as people with high blood pressure to the point of aneurysm usually don’t die of cancer, but that shows how the curve is one weird mo-fo.

For her Time she was quite a remarkable woman my friend Lois. She was a midwife in the military back in the days of the WAVES. She lived through the depression and integration and the wave of technology with good humor and fearlessness. Her favorite stories were of cross country trips in the early days of the interstate highway system and the lean early days after their move west.

Unlike the Norwegian Blue Lois fled the cage and lived a long life, I hope they gave her one last smoke.

Fog Day Afternoon

2010-11-18T18:43:00.000-08:00

A video blog for the 17th of November 2010