Meatball Mail

Some people get greeting cards in their mailbox; Oggy gets frozen meatballs. And his mail box is a paint tray. If I live long enough I will deliver food bank frozen meatballs to the kid trying to fix my 40 year old furnace. I'll consider it payment for his labor. I will be blind and have no memory of my days in the oil field and will long have ceased to log in to my blog because I forgot the password or the point. My friends will be dead from heart attacks and economic hardships. Their children will never think of me.

Electricity 101

blog friendly schematic

As I've said, this blog is useless to me as anything more than a plastic fuck doll that I blow up and fuck with the curtains closed and then deflate and shove under the bed. ANYTHING THAT I ACTUALLY NEED comes from other media like real life or diy forums or mechanical forums. IF you want pictures intended for you then take a good look. CAN YOU FIGURE OUT THE PROBLEM?? My audience has let me down for 5 years, they have mocked me and insulted me and ignored my plight so I'm plainly and frankly vexed and disgusted by their uselessness to me. I amuse myself for my own amusement and I do it publicly. If you have a voyeuristic integrity cultivated over the time span of your teenage ambitions then go ahead and amuse yourself with my canvas. ENJOY! But I have been called a rat and a coward and a traitor and a scumbag and other unmentionables IN MY OWN HOUSE and so I have nothing but disdain and repulsion for humanity. It's 28 degrees and my testosterone has deflated my chemical imbalance and I get smarmy responses to my depressing demise. I got laid off for Christmas and I have a spine injury and a neck pain that makes sleeping impossible and I'm a big clown that dances on the sidewalk for quarters from millionaires. It's gross and I'm constipated and sleep in my clothes for warmth. The cast iron bathtub with no shower cools off the water before I can get warm. Blah blah blah, another Oggy drama that bores almost no one. It's a new year and I'm done being polite.

Plea

I'm broken. This is basic HVAC wiring. HVAC 101 and I have flunked. It irks me that neglect and ignorance lands me in a frozen house. It also irks me that after 24 years as a devoted art and speech teacher in public schools, the owner of this decaying house doesn't have any money. He is flat broke...living one month to the next, literally eating at a senior nutrition center and getting week old bread. The only income he has is my rent and his Social Security hahahah. 24 years in public schools and he gets excited for cupcakes that had all the frosting scraped off them when someone dropped them at the grocery store. He's had a leaking heart repaired, two bypass surgeries...gout...blindness and senility and today I walked in to the kitchen to write down this sketch and all the burners on the stove were glowing red hot as he tried to stay warm. Of course he wasn't in the kitchen since it was still freezing cold. The heating system is only fixable by someone like me because a licensed pro couldn't be liable for working on it. and he'd know it would cost less to replace it. but the house isn't going to last so a new heating system makes no sense. but the persistence of our blood and mind as it painfully stumbles along in any condition can't be ignored. My labor is free so that's the big difference.

Nuclear Family

American Mythology

Since I've injured my back I've had some time to watch television and I'm repulsed almost the entire time I'm watching. Either we represent ourselves as gross and superstitious or we're too dumb to realize that's how we represent ourselves. This manual for the long extinct Sears Roebuck central air conditioner represents some kind of clue to our collective self image but I need help because my spirits are low and my condition is getting worse. I lack motivation and am not invested in our society, yet 6 year-old kids getting slaughtered makes me cry.

Elemental Failure

Can you see the problem?

My education in HVAC continues in the worst way possible. 50+ years after this Eisenhower era heating unit was installed I arrive and it immediately breaks. Not pictured is the shower of sparks that occurred when I tried to stretch the coil to fit again and caused mayhem. Three of the four elements are toast. It looks like a $10 part and probably was in 1965. Today, I'm literally going to have to start my own reality show in order to hunt this part down. For those Russians searching my blog to spam me with worthless Gucci perfume ads THE LEAST YOU CAN DO is hunt through your soviet scrap heaps for something similar and mail it to me. This is a Sears Air Handler and the sears Service techs laughed at me when I read them the part number. 493.58703. They were like, "Where are the other five numbers?....Oh, you mean it's from 1957 and you want replacement parts? Do I sound like an antique dealer?"

Even The Onion is Mortal

I have to remove the link to the Onion in my web feed because over the last year they definitely replaced all their writers and the new writers are very annoying to me. I realize in a satire institution they have to have new blood because no one can write at the top of their game about the same news cycle events. You need a new voice that understands the market and identifies with the target audience or at least says the same shit in a different way. I get it. I imagine I would last two years on the staff of The Onion before the dismal irony and non-stop parody of our own desperation got to be too much. Eventually even comedy writers get scared that they are not only doing nothing in the wake of one disaster after another but they are mocking the reaction of people who are legitimately trying to do something. And this contradiction has occurred even to humble Oggy in his times of reflection.

I'll Be Home For Chrsitmas

I had a request for some songs and it took some time to get it together and upload it but here's "I'll be Home For Christmas" as performed at the old age home. It's the only sheet music I had in my collection. The sad news is that when I tried to tackle an uptempo version of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, the 87 year old Minnie couldn't help but feel that Christmas spirit and started to dance. She is generally wheelchair bound so I had to slow the Reindeer pack down but it was too late and Minnie had already injured her knee and run out of breath. I really want to die a merciful death early and painlessly rather than have a front row seat to my own decay.
It's one of the great miracles that the virgin birth of a man 2012 years ago on the opposite side of the world somehow is celebrated with songs about flying ungulates in North America.

This makes no sense. I got a pair of socks and some strong painkillers in my stocking.

Nouveau Bohemian

Piano tuning apprentice. Bing Crosby's Sail Along, Silv'ry Moon keeps Oggy company

Attempting to tune a 40 year old Knabe piano in a room without heat. Freezing. Drinking spiked moonshine to dull senses. Using a new digital laptop as a high tech strobe tuner. Spent more on piano tuning accessories than I grossed in all of 2011 which still only amounted to a half day of overtime work in the oil field. (Note rosewood handle on tuning lever) Determined to play tin pan alley songs for the entertainment of deaf dogs....and then blogging about it.

Take a good look because this kind of lifestyle will not exist in the new world order.

As soon as my back gets better I'm going to Guatemala.

Aftermath

That word has been in the news quite a bit. Aftermath. I'm thinking it is a catchphrase in the knee-jerk double speak manipulation of reality that Fox News and other marketeers of disinformation use to keep people thinking less critically and more inside a box that vomits capitalism. They want us to think that at 7am we start our day. at noon we eat. at 5 pm we go home. when tragedy strikes there is a pattern of preparation, ignorance, death, grief and renewal...and aftermath. This is the subtle manipulation of a culture by the big thinkers behind the curtain. We are not a philosophical nation but we like to pretend we are when the rest of the world is watching. Aftermath is a five cent word being used by balloon chested news anchors with big hairspray manes of Sub continent nun hair extensions and false white teeth caps. Those are who we look to for guidance like blind people checking a cemetery for speed dating. If you aren't repulsed then you are numb like Novocaine.

Is Today the end of the world?

Oggy doesn't have to hold a news conference to announce his views on gun violence. If any politician thinks he can control guns then he should run his next campaign on ending prostitution and underage drinking because he's totally insane or else he's the greatest statesman ever. That will never ever happen. We let the cat out of the bag and the FBI can't keep track of assault rifles sold to drug cartels and the CIA sells rocket launchers to Bin Laden to fight the Soviets in exchange for warriors to kill Honduran hippies. Ok, but the Kittery Trading Post gun rack is the problem?? It's too late for a conservative approach to gun ownership. Radical measures for radical people. We won our freedom with stolen muskets in 1776 and then slaughtered each other in 1862 and then gunned down Germans and Japs in 1945 and Bin Laden was introduced to the business side of an assault rifle a few years back. Nobody wants our schools to become killing fields but that also applies to our fear that China will launch an invasion while Family Guy reruns play to stoned obese sloths...so guns are as plentiful as dental floss and we are technically safer because of it... until unpredictable human nature steps in.

Every Cloud Has Some Rain

"Aside from poor management and possibly fraudulent activity, Chesapeake is struggling with financial issues. Chesapeake currently does not have the cash flow necessary to cover its planned capital expansion. It is estimated that the company has a funding gap of nearly $9 billion. This is clearly bad news, as it means the company wants to expand more than it can afford." --from an July '12 article that I didn't read until today.

Oggy no longer has an obligation to hide company secrets, or how he ignored the hard hat rule.

The Entertainer

I couldn't be bothered to close the bathroom door.
Never mind. The air handler situation has not been resolved but I've determined it is probably a problem with something called a sequencer. It's a relay that has a time delay built into the heat activated contacts. Anyway, that's why it is 45 degrees in my room and I must wear coats 100% of the time. The old owner is oblivious to the problem as he is numb and dying and senile and has 3 dogs to pile on him to stay warm. We had a conversation about his "leaky heart" that really made me feel everything is futile and fleeting and manufactured emotions. I'm passionate about nothing except my imaginary life as a concert pianist.

Pure Imagination

"Imagine There's no Fracking"

that's the message Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon bought a page of the NY Times to spread this year. Ok. Let's do that. I'll call Yoko's bluff of her trite misuse of her dead husband's words. Let's all imagine the world without hydro fracturing. And while we are at it let's imagine the world without any oil production of any kind because honestly you are an ignorant person if you think conventional drilling is much different than hydro fracturing since the end result of carbon in the air is equivalent though it's true less material is pumped into the ground, but that only matters if you drink water. So let's imagine a world without oil use...since that's a good exercise for those who will live to see 2040 when that won't be a fantasy and all the carbon we've deposited in the atmosphere will have to be scrubbed with gigantic solar powered vacuums...probably reclaimed football stadiums or Rush Limbaugh's bloated jowls...hahahaha.

Relay Race

This ancient air handler system is working non stop. I can't turn it off at the thermostat.

Gruesome Decomposing

The cat corpse exhumation project was too awful to share pictures with you. It was like a Creepshow episode. Trust me when I suggest you think wisely about grave sites before burying a cat in a pillowcase. But it had to be done and my conscience can rest now.

Pet Semetery

Question: What's worse than burying a cat?

Answer: Burying a cat and then deciding that it was creepy because you buried it in a pillowcase with ducks and trains printed on it and the corpse is a few feet from your bedroom window and you never even looked at the cat and it wasn't respectful to dig a shallow grave and dump it in there...so you must exhume the body like it is Vladimir Lenin and then move the corpse to another hole farther in a field and rebury it and make a cross and say a prayer.

News Flash

Did anyone else read that this part of Texas is the fastest growing oil field in the world right now? $28 Billion dollars is pouring into a part of the continent previously famous for a bat cave and a store that is called "Guns and Liquor" because it sells both guns and liquor.

This is a quiet and deserted area and the influx of workers has trailer parks springing up everywhere. Really, the only occupation that isn't in demand right now is environmental engineering. My company had plans for a wind turbine farm that was delayed because a damn sparrow or rare bat uses that area for migration. But everything else is in demand. The big money is in logistics and city planning because $28 billion dollars is more money than has been spent here since Texas was a Republic and that's how much is going to be spent in the next few years.

Knabe Restoration Project

Easiest Piano Move in History. Pushed through one door way.

It's been too long since I owned one of these. The Summer of 2010 I bought a digital short scale Clavinova and hauled it up the stairs in Snobmouth and it was gone before Fall. Before that I sold a Korg Digital Grand in Los Angeles in 2008 that had a fuzzy circuit. The piano practice rooms at Humboldt State were all I had from 1998-2003. And I owned a really crappy piano that I got from the Redwood City Salvation Army in exchange for moving a refrigerator to San Jose in 2006. Eventually I cut that one up with a reciprocating saw and broke my kneecap when the strings exploded and the cast iron string plate sprang up and flung me across the decaying single-wide trailer. It's one of the sacrifices of living in a van that I can not regularly practice piano. But the economy doesn't really care how many Lionel Richie songs I ruin with my off key singing so my skills withered for 2 years as I silently tolerated the police interrogations and abandonment because I am a recluse and stubborn and irresponsible and unrealistic. Then I found a real job and became a hypocrite and a devourer of planets and greedy and a sell out. But all along it would be obvious except to only the blindest dullard that my priorities are to play piano constantly and this one goal has been thwarted time and time again...until now.

Thematic Explorations

"It was very likely that the person responsible for stealing all of Oggy’s clothes was building a cocoon for a stuffed animal and simply needed more material. He’d seen weirder things and only the precipitous situation, his rumbling stomach and the arrival of chilling darkness with no more than his ragged cotton serape to protect him, prevented Oggy Bleacher from pondering the long list of weirdness that had been his assigned lot in life to witness since his arrival in the blighted land of Santa Cruz. Oggy’s focus hovered between the two metaphysical lips of a wide chasm of philosophy. What was more important at this very moment? The study of the human condition or the survival of the human? And what consequences wrought by the crime and punishments of time would follow Oggy’s answer? Not even the advancing arthritis in Oggy’s shoulder and back distracted him from silently debating this secondary-topic. To focus on survival at the cost of philosophical reflection was brain death. The unexamined life is not worth living, is it not?

Wonderful World

I've been following the trail of bread crumbs that my former self left in order for me to find the main theme that I was writing about in the Santa Cruz homeless epic romance novel I've been writing for 13 years. Somewhere carved on a tree in California I had a perfectly mapped out synopsis that was irrefutable and original and authentic and was guaranteed to win me accolade and financial freedom and I think I wrote some of it down by we have been feeling the lash of the whip on our heat stroked backs and have returned to the 60+ hour work week. That's Texan-speak for "An Easy Week" When you reach 80+ hours then you can say you worked overtime. I figured out that I'm off the clock for only 9 hours a day. Keep filling up those 25 gallon tanks so you don't have to bicycle to buy your spicy fried original recipe chicken you repulsively fat fucks! I'm going to fill the wallets of every street hooker in town with your frivolous oil waste.

I spent Thanksgiving watching "Gone With The Wind" in Spanish. There is no Spanish equivalent to a southern accent so it was kind of lame.

Enough about me. I'm buying an acoustic piano to install in my van next to the wood stove so I can play Lionel Richie melodies as I'm driving. I'm also quitting the solar panel assembly job to pick lettuce because I haven't been self destructive in a while and I'm tired of people trying to pat themselves on the back because they think I'm a success. You common-minded simpletons. Have you cracked a book in your life that might shine some rays into your regionally shaped brain? Traditions like rooting for the Red Sox and eating slices of pizza are the opium that poor people sooth their loneliness with like rosaries broken in a dusty chapel. My arm is too fucked up to pat myself on the back and even if I could I would recognize the terminal illness of society as it lumbers toward delusions of grandeur.

That turtle I rescued. The video of its release was taken by the police as evidence.

I haven't eaten today and they are going to kick me out of the library soon so I have to wrap this up. Listen, I'm decaying faster than a banana peel tossed on a Nascar track and I estimate more people die in car crashes in the Eagleford shale area than die in Afghanistan so I'm trying to make every daydream count. The world is merciless and unforgiving to little animals. We make a buck and then spend it to repair the scar tissue that was maimed by making the buck. But there is a chance that this madness will lead to an energy neutral society. Yes, foraging and gathering was also energy neutral and left much less time for crystal meth and human trafficking but it also guaranteed an early death. Now you can grow old and grey in a comfortable chair with tea and a man playing Louis Armstrong songs in a "Freely/Rubato" tempo.

REDACTED PICTURE Jose tries to teach me electrical theories but I'm a stubborn pinche gringo who knows it all.

Actually, Jose turned me on to the king of classic Mexican Ranchera music. Jose Alfredo Jimenez. I want to play this at the old age home but they would kick me out. So I intend to go to Mexico to play on the street and sing of my broken heart to people who invented broken hearts. It's a wonderful world. Happy Pearl Harbor Day!

Top 10 Highlights of the Week

1. Determined I grossed $11,000 in one month*
2. Rescued a pond turtle from imminent death on the highway and set it free in the local park where it immediately attacked a bathing swan.
3. Laptop hotstick stopped working preventing any blogging.
4. Bought at least $200 worth of frivolous items at Walmart and Tractor Supply.
5. My refrigerator looks like a ten fat Americans live with me.
6. Three teenage girls saw my van at the park and asked for a tour. I said, "There are men who give tours of their van to teenage girls and then there are men who know better." I drove away...fast.
7. Prayed I'd win $550 million in Powerball lottery....but lost.
8. Estimated another month of work before shoulder surgery is required to allow me to brush my teeth.
9. Replaced a belt on a 2004 Mitsubishi Eclipse by bypassing the broken air compressor pulley. The belt was about 1148 mm long.
10. Remembered how to play the A section of Joplin's "The Entertainer" on piano.

* This means I grossed $11,000 for the year.

Fracking Bonanza

I went to that ever reliable new source CNN and for once saw myself in the spotlight and not in a story about homelessness.

The comments to that article are totally about the end of the world caused by hydro fracturing. Some predict it and some deny it and some wish it would happen and some don't care but will insult others just because they can. My current position is that we don't get to see enough of time to get outside our own self-consciousness. 80 years is pitiful compared to the 2 million of human history or the 4 billion of earth's history. Imagine that 100 million years after the creation of earth there was still 900 million more years before the earth was "only" 1 billion years old. Sort of makes going to the store to save $10 on a iPad kind of insignificant.

Ac-cen-tu-ate The Positive

A buddy wanted me to fix his guitar so he brings me a bone nut. The crappy laminate guitar is worth about $30 and the nut costs about $25 so I'm puzzled by his math. Now I have to shape the thing with none of the proper tools. I used the file that I normally clean out my wood stove with.

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows

One of the great pleasures of the last year or two has been performing at long term care facilities. Not only do I get a chance to play nice pianos for a captive audience but once in a while a resident will interrupt the final chorus of "Moon River" to request a song. At the Clipper Home a man as white as a bed sheet croaked up, "Do you know Honeysuckle Rose?" and I really had to work to sight read that one but on the third try I played a passable melody. Today the song was the obscure "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" from 1918, revived by Andy Williams in 1965 and then forgotten...except by 90 year old Texas gentlemen.

Thanksgiving

I'm spoiled and a brat and a hypocrite and I don't wash my clothes enough. I have psoriasis and arthritis and halitosis and psychosis. I get back spasms that awake me like a Medieval torture rack. I surpass the recommended daily limit of Ibuprofen before 5am. My mouth has wrinkles that look like an old woman so I'm doubly troubled because I'm too vain to ignore it and too old to do anything about it. I spent months and recent years without two nickles to spend basically surviving hand to mouth at homeless shelters and getting mishandled by the police state soldiers. The trouble was my crippled pride and also my basic math skills that determined a poorly paying job was actually worse than doing nothing at all. I was more broke struggling to keep a shitty job than just quitting the job and playing guitar. That's the state of the Economy as one thing the Right Wing Big Mouth Radio Pundits have correct is the welfare state that rewards poverty as long as you play by the rules of the loathsome impoverished and don't rock the boat or join any unions. The working resentful poor are so much more fucked than the lazy check cashing sloth because they are broke and the police know they are pissed off and near the breaking point in a cycle of decline. And because they have to take a cocaine piss test to work they must use only stolen prescription pain medication to get through the day.

Changing History

Young men make history, but old men write it down. Middle aged men invent history and then take unnecessary naps. Oggy has moved past the Bronze age of communication and has come upon something called a Laptop Internet Stick...that magically allows him to access and inflate his alternate ego from the comfort of his 1980s man cave. Keep in mind that this blog is for entertainment purposes and good entertainment is not a facebook status picture of false smiles and best behavior because entertainment titillates, disgusts, enrages and soothes. Maybe it amuses but it must be a roller coaster ride or else it is nothing but a diary written knowing ones mother spell checks it every evening.

Snapshots of self-loathing

 I've been drinking heavily lately to medicate my own lack of redemption and silence the howling of the undefended wolf who haunts my van nightmares. My shirt doesn't fit because I bought it when I didn't have two pesos to rub together and I was a gaunt 120 pounds from eating the left overs at the Jack in the box dumpster and now I've grown too big for the shirt. The television shows me insane drug smuggling and slavery followed by beer ads and medicine to make my cock hard. I don't like or appreciate anything and the repulsive stank of fuckwads who berate me for not bending to the will of the world and then when I bend to the will of the world call me a hypocrite are lower than worm shit and I should know because I'm lower than worm shit and break my arm daily patting myself on the back because I can install solar panels for $8 million dollars and sniff a crumb off the table of the Halliburton. Oh, but get a stick up your ass because I'm wearing my elbows out at the local bar or fucking my landlord but TOTALLY IGNORE the hydrofracturing that is going on. That makes as much sense as anything our pitiful public schools teach as fact like Indians trading corn with Pilgrims for smallpox. Texans drink and eat like starving Somalians at a Hometown Buffet free for all and they play like hyperactive kids at Chuck E Cheese wack-a-mole festival. Don't hate me for trying to fit in.

Aching Bones and Changing Alliances

I wasn't built for this kind of labor. I'll be the first to admit it. The Bleacher Family are long in the bone and thin in the muscle. We were bred for politics and classrooms. Maybe even priesthood. Arduous labor was not to be my lot in life but I felt it was elitist and cowardly to eat the fish but not get my paws wet. We Bleachers loved to sympathize with the poor and the hungry over gigantic turkey dinners. And ethically to be ignorant of the oil industry is intolerable since in enabled most of my adventures in life. I don't understand the science behind the H2S separators and vents and why one vent will be on fire as a dragon breathing flames and another will leak deadly Hydrogen Sulfide right where I'm trying to dig a hole. Another mystery is sour oil and how it is separated in tanks that contain water and oil and then sent back to be separated again....never mind how humans accomplish something miles underground like drilling straight down and then forcing the pipe to bend at a 20 degree angle precisely into a pocket of oil and then inject water and sand into the crack. It's all bites of the apple of knowledge I wasn't really groomed to eat.

America

Happy Veterans Day to you all who served.

I don't have much to write about but I'm trying to put that whole misunderstanding about me and my landlord behind me so I'm going to post something that has irked me lately.

My crew are all good men. One is too young immature to put ego aside but no one is perfect. They are not Mexican because that would be like saying they are working with a green card and can't speak English and send money to Monterrey. None of that is true. One of them speaks less Spanish than I do but they often refer to themselves as Mexican and me as an "Anglo" or Gringo...which technically we all are. Maybe this is a cultural pride thing but they are Americans in my book. Of course they are more Mexican than I am but it's not a contest. Maybe they are 3rd generation American while I am 6th. does this matter?

One of them was telling a story of how his daughter in 1st grade was crying because a kid in her class asked, "Why do we have to go to school with a dirty Mexican?" and the kindergarten teacher allegedly answered, "I don't know."

And another said he fought his father in law at the hospital when his child was born with a purple hue because the father in law of the Anglo mother said, "Put the baby back in, he's still Mexican."

Imagine your father fighting your grandfather in the hospital on the day you are born. Obviously these are hurtful things to say but we are about 70 miles from the political boundary of Mexico and only a total idiot would think this area was always American. Culturally, it has about a 50/50 split between rodeos and mariachi bands. Quincineras and "mutton busting" are equally accepted coming of age honors. Most radio stations here are Spanish. The others play horrible anglo country songs that drive me insane with their lack of sophistication and bastardized ethics of beer and tight jeans. Awful!

I don't understand this prejudice but I do see where some of the animosity toward old Oggy comes from. I'm assumed to be prejudice. Slowly my personality has revealed that I am far from prejudiced against anything but ethical and geometric characteristics.
They ask, "Don't you think about pussy? When was the last time you got laid?"
And I say, "You know how that power strut piece we attach to the Number 1 oil tank has those wide holes...what if we...

and our arguments proceed in this manner.

"Oggy, the world isn't perfect."
"But don't you see we have the chance to make this part of the world perfect."
"You're taking too long."
"Because no one has figured out the order of operations. In the long run we're wasting time doing it your way. We need to just think about this. Did you even read the instruction manual that came with those connectors?"
"Manual?
"Look. Start from the beginning..."
"Come on, I want to get drunk."
"Now if I cut off the end of the u-bolt at exactly 10 threads then that will allow me to..."

It's pretty amusing since I am not in charge of anything or anybody.
That's all for now.

Formative Albums

Formative Albums I’ll start at the beginning: Albums didn’t exist in the modern sense until the early 1960s. Before that a Single would be released and then another and another. Then a Compilation Album. In 1963 The Beatles came along and they had the idea to release all of their songs at once…and even write specifically for a collection of songs. Yellow Submarine, Let it Be, The White Album and my favorite….

Abbey Road. A track by track essay would take forever so I’ll leave that for my afterlife career in writer’s purgatory. For now, the highlight is the first track, “Come Together”. The octave sliding bass line played by Sir Paul McCartney is priceless and locks you into the music. The Lennon-sung lyrics are proto-rap and risqué for the time. “I know you, you know me, one thing I can tell you is you got to be free.” This was the basic advice the Fab Four had at the end of the 1960s. Somehow the Oceanic gap between London and New York had preserved the group’s originality and soul. They were not folk and they were not rock and they weren’t the dominant rockabilly and blues that had inspired them to pick up instruments in the first place. They were inspired and impossible to imitate (even they couldn’t imitate themselves) and their music totally transcended the time. I was introduced to the Beatles first by my father’s Greatest Hits record and later by the ultimate enthusiast Robert G. in Yosemite. Robert schooled me in The Beatles and also in another album that should make this list but doesn’t because I don’t want two albums by the same artist.

Dry Season

I want to demonstrate the oblivious nature of the nation without revealing my own oblivious nature so it's difficult. Basically, it amounts to this: a dry riverbed in Texas must mean that everywhere is dry. And a clear sky over my head means that there is no storm anywhere. And since birds and bees don't elect presidents then I pay no attention to anything of that nature. If I want to embrace the true oil field mentality then it would be to ignore anything of any importance that happens outside of my own crew digging trenches through rocky Kaliche in the dusty mesquite while the gas flares bellow flames as metal dragons in an uncaged domain. Isn't that something everyone can relate to? And if your world involves something like lack of power or lack of a house then it isn't my concern. But that's not really embracing the mentality because it recognizes your existence. Actually, most of my compadres have no comment on the east coast storm of the century because it did not involve them. One person said, "What storm?" That's the kind of oblivion that is cultivated out here and I've fallen prey to it without time to digest awful social media and flagrant gossip on the interweb.

Fort Inge

Let's not forget that Oggy is trying to learn about and understand his world. So this quest to Historic Fort Inge was a deviation from his sexual perversions and environmental rape. Climbing to the top of this bump of coarse red rock was no small task since there is no trail (Texans don't aspire to climb nameless hills) and the rattlesnakes guard every step and Oggy's feet are worn from 72 hours of abuse in the oil field.

Identify This Spider

Wolf Spider Found in Texas...About 2 inches long

I can laugh about it now but this spider came from the dense webs behind the crumbling microwave over stand. It looks completely deadly to me but I was able to set it free in the wilderness. It must be native to the desert in this part of Texas and that marking on his back will make it easy to ID.

In fact, it only took 30 seconds for me to figure out that it is a Wolf Spider

It's poisonous, like mainstream media, but not fatal. Considering my relationship with the Wolf, this is yet another strange coincidence that makes me believe I was fated to live at this house and have raunchy gay sex with an 82 year old queer. Again, the Lord Jesus Christ works in mysterious ways and this must be His hand guiding mine under the withered scrotum of my landlord as I fellate his throbbing member.

Welcome Home

Any tale that begins with, "I met an older Mexican guy at a park...and..." will definitely end in weirdness. My Saturday was no exception as I was cleaning out my van and an older Mexican man asked what my moped was. I gave him the tale of my 1974 Vespa Ciao that I bought in a basket in California and restored and tried to give away or sell and then fixed and took to Mexico and rode around with leaking piston slap to teach English to Palapa kids and then took across the country in my van etc etc...but, I said, I'm really looking for an apartment. Oh, he knows a guy renting an apartment. So I get in his van and off we go...

Tree City

Main Street Uvalde (misleading because it's actually a busy town)

See Me Now

Here's a mirror image I see every day and it doesn't take 20/20 vision to know what a hypocrite looks like. Conventional Wisdom leads to events like the holocaust. And in the years of trying to get involved with alternative energy I've resisted because despite what the hippies say the solar power comes at great cost and is most often used in military and oil related fields. You think the Humboldt pot growers use only solar power to grow their $100K harvest? You want to rely on Norcal sunshine to guarantee your payday? No, they use gas and diesel power generators....

Universitas Litterarum

"Each Castalian Institution and each Castalian should know only two ideals: to achieve the utmost possible perfection in his subject, and to keep both his Faculty and himself, living and elastic, so that he may know himself to be permanently bound to all other subjects and inwardly on good terms with all of them. This second ideal, the idea of the inner unity of all intellectual human effort, the thought of universality, has its perfect expression in our illustrious Game.
The physician, the musical historian or whatever teacher you like may at times display a stern and ascetic perseverance in his own subject and renounce the thought of a universal culture in favor of the special high achievement of the moment: but we- we bead players- whatever we do, must never approve and practice this limitation and self-sufficiency, for it is our definite task to preserve the idea of a Universitas Litterarum and its highest expression, the noble Game, and ever and again to rescue it from the inclination of the individual Faculties towards self-sufficiency."
From the Glass Bead Game
Hermann Hesse

Uncle Sam Mordida

It turns out McDonalds has a strong signal and I can sit in my van by the river and blog a bit before turning in for the night.
 I don't know how to say this without it sounding like a complaint, but this check I received on Friday was obviously the largest check I'd ever been paid. I don't want to give specifics but let me say that between Federal Withholding,  Social Security and Medicare tax the government took out $600 in one week. You can figure it out from there what they left me with. I'm satisfied with the remainder but if folks want to question what I contribute to the conventional social fabric of America then they will be wise to remember that I contribute about 400% more than they do right now so they should keep their mouths shut tightly on their crooked tongues. I literally made in one hour what it took 11 hours of grinding abuse moving port-o-potties in the heat of Austin to make. It's like I'm being paid back for my lettuce picking days. That's all I have to say.

Be Back in 10 Minutes

I've been able to write infrequent notes hinting at my status because the man-camp my company has set me up in has internet access and I've kept my laptop computer running with copper watch parts and hair pins and mutilated soldering tips. But that is about to change and with 72 hour work weeks and likely interruption in the lackadaisical lifestyle Oggy is accustomed to living with Jazz guitar and philosophic ponderings and futile longing for love and friendship, I want to prepare everyone for a delay in updates. I'm sure the next mistake I make will be my last with the company and I guess I get what I deserve for not catching on to the protocol. It isn't the job itself, which I could do myself, but it's fitting into a team under my own assertion of will. What the younger generation lacks in self reflection and universality, they make up for with eager aggressiveness to make a buck...even if it means doing something wrong as long as they do it faster than you...and as long as they ignore any long term impacts of their activity. Bravo, philosophy is dead.

The Heart of America

"Smell that?"
"What?"
"Overtime."

There were 9 of us waiting for a guy taking a shit at a gas station bathroom. That bowel movement probably cost the company $150 but there was nothing that could be done. It just happened that we surpassed 40 hours for the week on Thursday Morning as the guy was in the bathroom and I had nothing to do but reflect on the insanity of that situation since not long ago I was sitting at an outdoor street ministry where kindly Texan seniors and teenagers with big acne grins forked potato salad onto styrofoam plates for the homeless and destitute of Flour Bluff. I had less than no money since I had actually spent everything to stay alive and was buying yoghurt and bananas with my credit card at 12% interest. My breakfast was financed by my bank....cereal on layaway. Each job I looked at seemed like death to me with a dead end and gray hair with no future and no past. I may as well smuggle illegal immigrants or become a pimp than change oil in a dirty cellar. Instead I got a job at a trailer park that paid enough for me to throw every penny at my credit card debt. I'd stare at my $60 cowboy hat and dusty bongo drums and really curse my bad choice in  cars and jobs and purchases. My priorities might make for entertaining reading before returning to your casual existence but let me tell you that my life has been completely out of touch with reality for a long time and my mailbox hasn't exactly been overflowing with support. Two roads were diverged in a wood and while I was deciding which path to take a mule train hauling toxic waste ran my skinny ass over.

Each night the police would shine their flashlights in my sweating, haggard face, patting down my bony hips for weapons. My crime was poverty. The one devout Christian I met, a woman who had a television playing fire and brimstone, Jesus is coming soon, daytime ministry all day long, was offended when I used the break room refrigerator to store my food for the next 5 days of work...so she fired me from the trailer park gig. My policy of wandering the country with long hair and sandals preaching peace and simplicity whenever two were gathered in my name was abhorrent to her and she was equally blind to the blatant contradiction. The lady with multiple personalities never called me back to ask me what I did with her rotten toilet scrubber.

Rotten Eggs

I smell like Hydrogen Sulfide. And the evil irony of my blighted morals is that we installed two 90 watt solar panels today that will power the electronic units we also installed. And this is the chicken bone that has me choking in the night on my own self-loathing: even clean energy aids and abets the enemy. Perforating trucks split layers of earth and then inject fine engineered sand into the layers, and then a gel of mysterious properties...and this technique allows oil to seep through the sand to the horizontally drilled suction tubes. That's if the Louisiana pipe fitters didn't try to foolishly pass someone on a double yellow line and wind up with a steering wheel as a necklace.

Explosions in the Distance

We were troubleshooting our work at the last pad (someone switched red and black wires) when way off in the distance came a low rumbling explosion. Thunder? No, it was 95 degrees and slightly cloudy. Demolition? Not advisable near Hydrogen Sulfide tanks. It sounded maybe ten miles away but a day later the rumors were confirmed that an oil rig had exploded.

Two Injured in Oil Rig Accident

Story Created: Oct 11, 2012 at 12:29 PM CDT

Story Updated: Oct 11, 2012

Two people are injured in an oil rig accident just east of Laredo. It happened in Ranchito, Las Lomas, about 15 miles east of Laredo, on Highway 59. One of the men injured was pierced in the abdomen by a pipe. The other was hit in the back. An AIR Vac helicopter was at the scene ready to transport patients. The two men, however, were taken by ambulance to area hospitals; one to Laredo, the other to Corpus Christi. Sheriffs deputies were on the scene, along with the Webb County Fire Department. We still do now know what caused the accident. 

Tools of the Trade

H2S sensor

This is required PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) along with my hard hat and safety goggles and steel toe boots and flame resistant clothing. It monitors the H2S level in the air and I wear it on my shirt. 10ppm is the level we can work at for 8 hours with no effect. 15 ppm is only acceptable for 15 minute intervals. 100 ppm will leave you dizzy and sick. 600 ppm will kill you by crystallizing your lungs in a second. The wells I have been frequenting are either "closed in" or not pumping and have no risk...or are pumping and have the potential for 7000-11000 ppm. I say potential because the gas is contained in the tanks and a pipeline although there is always a residual smell of rotten eggs which is a characteristic of H2S. I have no idea where the pipeline goes.

The gas flares near all the pumping wells are excess H2S being burned off. I'm not completely up to speed on the engineering and containment of the gas but I know it is present in the tanks and pipeline and could vent at any time into a deadly gas cloud. That's what the safety personnel are for. We watch the wind socks to give us an idea of which way to run if an alarm should go off. You run upwind and hold your breath. If someone falls then you find 2 emergency air packs and then go back to get them. I hope that doesn't happen.

Torque Screwdriver

Question: What kind of a person would shop for a $240 torque screwdriver?

Answer: A rich one.

We used one of these screwdrivers at my semi-conductor cable harness gig. The screws on the power supply connector required 12lbs of torque and hearing that indicator click was like an orgasm to my engineering personality. I vowed if I could ever afford one I would get one not because I need it (how many screws come with torque specs?) but because the thing is a work of mechanical engineering art and it's the best screwdriver I've ever used. King Arthur has his Excalibur; I have a torquing screwdriver.
And if you think this is a frivolous purchase you should see what other people are buying. My coworkers wonder how I can be so frugal.

American Made

I asked for the "Top Gun" haircut and that's what I got.

The next thing you know I'll be trading in the van for a 2013 Super Duty Diesel truck with 18'' rims and a sticker on the back that says "Oil Field Trash And Proud Of It"

Peasant Sly Confinement

Worn universality from broken EGR valves and grease and philosophy

"...Well, the people of the outside world were no less proud of their bad manners, of their lack of culture and coarse vulgar humor, their peasant-sly confinement to practical, selfish aims, so that they appeared no less precious, sanctimonious and eclectic in their narrow-minded naturalness than the most affected Waldzellian prize scholar."
Plinio to Joseph when he confesses that his criticism of the monastic, reflective, ponderous, Castalian Life was premature.

I Know Why The Pregnant Robot Got An Abortion

See, the real world doesn't correspond to my style of blogging and I think that's what Mr. Pregnant Robot determined also and went into retirement. I reflect on today and it's not so much a blur, but it's character-less and lacks anecdotes and many details were banished from my mind to be replaced by actual job skills. I've never seen a spring bolt before but now I know how to instal them with the wrong side up. In fact, the grave seriousness of the situation has almost deactivated my entire mechanism for remembering and notating anecdotes. I trained myself over years to concentrate on details and read people in order to get the story behind the story. That wasn't a gift but something I cultivated by sacrificing any acceptable level of production and job ethic. Go ahead, blame the fall of the economy on me. I decided that if I wanted to be Hermann Hesse or John Steinbeck then I would have to live a fairly unconventional life and also I would have to pay complete attention to everything except what I was paid to be doing. I would catalog smells and sights and sounds and locations and all the details that must be included in a story. Work? Oh, I'd get to it eventually.

World And Sprit Sublimate

A theme throughout the works of Hermann Hesse is the opposed conditions of the spiritual life within pondering penitents in monasteries and the worldly life among politicians and soldiers and peasant wood carvers and club footed children. I will give you a passage from the glass bead game where Joseph reflects on his friendship with another student...

"The antithesis: world and spirit--or rather, the antithesis: Plinio and Joseph - had sublimated itself before my eyes into an harmony out of the struggle between two irreconcilable principles."

I'm Fine. How Are You?

Many mysteries were revealed in my first day at work. It's like all the practical projects I've been involved in for the last few years have culminated in making me custom fit for a job in hydro-fracturing and gas recovery. How did that work out? Because I'm an assembly fiend who also likes standardized installations. But philosophically I'm torn. I like difficult jobs where I can think about other things and in a few weeks this will be one of them.

It is sort of like being an astronaut because if you break down the duties of an astronaut then it's basically.
Step 1) Hold on for dear life.
Step 2) check instruments
Step 3) move a toggle switch back and forth
Step 4) walk around on moon
Step 5) Aim For Earth

I mean, really, does that sound so hard?

Early To Rise

Not a time that I like to see a lot but will seem routine in 1 week.

Before Work

After Work

The Poet and The Spider

Oggy trying to express his individuality

 Some parts of the blog are made up and some I wish I made up and some parts I couldn't make up if I tried. I'm not sure which category this past week belongs to but it is worth noting that I am officially registered at this Man Town logistics field hotel and am actively employed by a billion dollar energy company. I feel like an imposter but I could have been lured by sweet fiscal aroma into a web of destruction...

Lap of Luxury

This past week might go down in history as "Greatest Turn of Fortunes Ever" because I started it out ankle deep in Pontiac Firebird misery and depression and financial woes and I ended it with a total spend thrift attitude maxing out credit cards and taking loans out on your children's future earth all on a roll of the dice that something would work out and I could keep the van running and my arthritis under control and my self loathing below OSHA specs...and now I'm in a leather seat with free drinks and snack mix in luxury per diem expense account insanity in a billion dollar industry and three free meals and an air conditioned private room on a battleship watching 3D cartoon reenactments of my own life in peyote butterfly visions. I literally made $0 at that fucked up garage and I sweated on that Pontiac and that Chevy and BMW and a Narc Car and a honda gold wing for 3 weeks, doing probably $4000 worth of work. How fucked up is that? But the reversal has been dramatic as I'm buying $250 fire resistant pants and dreaming of exactly what custom wood working scrolling I want on the neck of my $3000 guitar. Exactly who do I want to dedicate this instrument to? I really can think of only one person. But that's all star gazing of a kid who wants to fly to the moon on his stuffed Pegasus.

Make or Break

What have I gotten myself into? This is seriously rolling the dice and I don't know if I want to win or lose. I'm scared and stressed and in pain and it's hot and the world is mad place right now. I'd heard rumors of what was happening in Nebraska and North Dakota and Texas and now I've seen it with my own eyes and I'm scared and I haven't even gotten dirty yet. We don't even know what's going on in hidden corners. The chaos that the news reports on is a mere grain of sand in the desert of indifference the universe has for humanity. I am incomparably small and insignificant and the turmoil I'm involved in now goes literally to the depths of the earth and smells like burning rubber and diesel fuel and looks like Mad Max.

Man Plans to Write Second Novel

A local man who plans to write a novel announced today his plans to write second novel after he writes the first one.

"It's the best follow-up novel on the century," said Duncan Reece of Detroit. "I don't want to go into details because that's not my process, but it's a slam dunk."

The man said that his plans to write his first novel have been going so well that he's already planning to write his second novel.

Sky Clearing

Another storm has arrived actually but metaphorically the sky above my head or inside the weather chamber of my mind has opened up a bit. My mechanic buddy asked me why I was leaving.
I said, "If you don't want a stray dog to hang around then you stop feeding him."
Meaning that when I do full time work and don't get paid then the boss is either assuming that my camping here with the junk heaps is worth $400 a week or else he doesn't think my work is worth anything. Either way it's the end of our business relationship, so I'm on the trail of a real job taking full advantage of the energy boom in Texas. I didn't know that people get paid $24 an hour and work 60+ hours a week linking electrical wires in the smoldering desert. It's not my dream job but they don't expect me to last longer than 5 months. $1700 a week is the kind of money that makes me review my J. Carruthers guitar order. Yes, it is.

Easy Money

Depravity

I was all ready to take the stator out of the goldwing when the boss told me he needed help recovering a truck 6 miles down the beach. I'll speculate and say that some punks saw this truck, stole it intending to strip it, went so far as to put another stolen license plate (over the original plate) and then got cold feet because they bragged about it to the wrong people...so they took it to the beach and set fire to this 2010 Ford FX2...and maybe moments before they lit the flames the took the hood and the radiator, or maybe someone discovered it after the fire burned down and took it but probably the parts were taken before the fire was set.

H2S

"Hydrogen sulfide has been implicated in several mass extinctions that have occurred in the Earth's past. In particular, a buildup of hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere may have caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago.<sup>[48]"

I just became closer acquainted with H2S than I thought I would ever have to but times have changed and this dog has been kicked around this summer like a basketball at Little Harbour Field when the 1st grade kids decided to stop playing with their hands.</sup>
  

Flightless Bird

I should stick to two wheels

There seems to be a theme lately with pulling an entire engine on a 1999 Pontiac Firebird and then dropping an engine on a 1985 Goldwing. And then there is the chicken figurine that wants to fly to the moon. The theme is birds and migration and I think Oggy is about to become another migratory bird.The trick was taking apart the front part of the left side exhaust pipe. I was really puzzled by how the engine would drop down on top of the exhaust headers and I don't have a manual and the online How-To was for a different model. But then I forced my brain to focus and there were two bolts holding the exhaust in two pieces. Remove the bolts and bang the front half off and then the engine can drop down unimpeded. The exhaust itself is some complicated piece of work as it connects under the frame and all the bolts are rusted. I was almost going to get an engine hoist and pick the whole bike up and remove the entire exhaust from under it. It was a real puzzle for a minute.

Firebird Update

I checked the oil in the Firebird and it looks like coffee and cream from Dunkin' Donuts. I never liked the way it was running and have the worst hopes for this vehicle now as this is the second engine and the second set of heads that appear to be leaking. The heads are tight, the gaskets are new, the heads are new but the engine block was original. It's not looking good. Cursed from the start.

Fortunately, I'm on the trail of a job that will let me leave all of this madness behind. It's either going to come together this week or slip through my fingers. I can't mention details because I accidentally used my oggybleacher gmail address to send my resume to the boss.
He called up, "May I speak to Oggy Bleacher?" and my eyes bulged open.
OH FUCK.
If he googles "Oggy Bleacher" then I'm sunk for lack of explaining my insanity.
Of course I also showed up to the interview with a full beard, a backward baseball cap and I was riding my moped. My strategy is to act like I already have the job.

Spiteful Post

GM Oil Pressure Sensor

I'm going to really give you casual surf monkeys something to ignore now because I'm going to describe the whole saga of this oil pressure sensor for a 1999 Pontiac Firebird.

First I want to tell you that the threaded end of this sensor is screwed directly into the engine block down by the oil pump. See? And the suction from the oil pump will direct oil into the hole and into this sensor where it spins microscopic wings around and magic fairies whisper secrets in troll ears and on the other end are two copper contacts on a suspended spring wire system. The plug going to the electronic control module is connected to the two prongs via an indexed connector that was green in 1999 and brown in 1998 (I know this from the crashed vehicle I found at the scrap yard)

No Relief

This is way better than living in the van

I really don't know what more I can do to get a comment from the three Russian spambots who regularly visit my blog.

Never Been To Spain...or Greece...or Tibet

How many more years do I need to sing this song before I get to Spain? I'm not talking about the Ibiza-body-shots-of-Vodka Spain but the rural Spain where live Fascist bombs still act as landmarks on the market road and kids still hold doors open for old women.

Goodnight

Webs of crooked lies deceive our inner hero
the wounds of past trespasses lock doors to freedom
freedom belabors the inclimate military
reality is a broken catchphrase for meat manufacturers
cattle withdraw cash from temples of fraud
we are all double agents who have had our
memories erased.
Television tries to implant new memories of heroic deeds
but finds the spot occupied by dusty trauma

I can write the saddest lines tonight
because the rain washes into rivers of mute erosion
the glad rags of our lonely love affair
are burned in acrid despair
but the embers burn red and the ashes fertilize new seeds
sewn by new lovers inventing the language again and again
holding hands holding hearts

Texas Drivers No Survivors

A customer said a cold front was coming to Corpus. I looked forward to it until 20 gallons of water poured into my window onto my guitar in thirty seconds. A cold front is what they call a monsoon. It actually wasn't cold at all and the humidity is currently unbearable. I'm certain my COPD is caused by chronic humid conditions that have crippled my lung capacity and led to a rasping wheeze. So, the drought is over in seconds and the waves wash over the front of my fender. I'm indifferent to the speeding cars and swerving trucks. Go ahead and hit me. Who fucking cares? Now the futile pick up trucks with nothing but sand in the bed make sense because the water can rise to two or three feet in a few minutes and these trucks plow through it to the next stop light or to get to the strip club. When I hit a puddle the water splashes under the engine compartment and irrigates the popcorn seeds I have growing under my seat. It's a sparse landscape of the bleak morality we call patriotism.

Billion Dollar Review

I drove my shitty Datsun 200sx into Beverly Hills to meet with John Updike's literary agent in a building that smelled like F. Scott Fitzgerald's spilled whiskey. I forget the agent's name now but he wanted to hire a cute, charming, 25 year old girl with great phone skills who would entertain his big name clients and cover scripts on the side and provide some eye candy for the slow days. Well, I've talked to cute, charming 25 year old girls, so I figured I was a good fit for the job.

COPD

"Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most common lung diseases. It makes it difficult to breathe. There are two main forms of COPD: Chronic bronchitis, which involves a long-term cough with mucus ..."
I have been crippled with asthmatic conditions since my swim in the polluted Gulf of Mexico (fuck you BP all those pop up ads on The Onion will not redeem you motherfuckers. May all your children drown in refined oil) and my wrists are broken from fighting off the West Nile infected mosquitoes. I sleep in my mosquito net but it's 200 degrees now and the sweat fills my ear like syrup on pancakes giving me infections and deliberate Blepheritus and Halitosis of the mind.

Vocal Harmony Galore

There may not be a sabbath but there is gospel music which gladdens my heart. I almost wish I had once been awash in sin (gay sex in seedy motels, heroin use, spousal abuse) so I could be born again with conviction. As it stands I would merely be giving up the occasional naughty cheerleader video and taking the Lord's name in vain. Yawn!

Minor Victories

The Firebird is growing on me as it is an introduction to modern vehicles (1999) It has 280,000 miles on it which makes me wonder why the owner wants to keep it alive. It ran badly and part of the problem was an EGR metal hose that I had never seen before so I didn't know that I had probably broken it when I forced it out of the fitting. It's a $50 part that I was luckily able to buy for $5 at the scrap yard down the street. The scrap vehicle had been in a head on collision with certain fatalities with the engine pushed over the EGR hose so I spent an hour getting it out. I reimbursed myself by stealing some special harness connectors that I broke, an oil pressure switch, and some fuses for the van. I also asked about a job. That sorted some of the vacuum problems out but the misfire continues so we ordered a coil pack and will see if that solves the main problem. It's now running alright. Everyone basically was saying it was bad gas and the parts needed to "mesh together" which is total lazy mechanic gibberish.

Wing and A Prayer

We all dream of flying to the moon

 I'm eating 5 bean casserole that has been in my cooler since 2009. It tastes ok.

Oggy in the process of getting West Nile Virus. Texas Mosquitoes make no noise when they fly and are too light to feel. They land and suck my blood like oil field energy companies.

 I was in a rage and at the flea market and found a collectible chicken and rooster. Lonely thoughts and angry resentments made me haggle with the old man selling it. I brought it home to the van and lived with it for a few weeks conversing with it nightly as to a theraputic pet rock. This little chick stayed behind when I set the rooster free.

Time to spread my wings

When I was remodeling I hatefully threw him in the trash but today I hunted him down again and set him free too. Maybe he will be reunited with his family one day.

For Those Who Can't Be Here

Though we have mosquitoes infected with West Nile Virus and my arms are punished each night like a heroin junkie, when I hear a soft song from Zep IV and my work is done for the day then it's all worth it.

Comic Relief

The Firebird was up on a lift when a man came into the garage speaking Spanish.
J.R. jumped in to translate since he is bilingual. The guy evidently wanted to buy salvage cars and ship them to Mexico where they are chopped and tagged. After he left J.R. said that if he comes back then I should treat him right because he knew how to make a buck.
I was in the middle of reattaching a ground wire to the engine block with my hand way up behind the head and said dead-pan, "My Spanish book doesn't cover illegal exports to Mexico until Chapter Two."
Steve laughed as he welded a shoddy catalytic converter joint and asked what Chapter Three was.*
"Crystal meth manufacturing."
"And people wonder why Arizona is against multi-cultural education," mumbled Steve through a shower of sparks and cigarette smoke.
J.R. lit up a cigarette and ignored us. His eyes were filling with dollar signs. I dropped the bolt and swore.

* Chapter One is Pablo Neruda

Advice on Living in A Van

I don't recommend anyone live in a van. Let's get that out of the way first. Living in a van is reactive, it's a symptom of a greater disease that's too complicated to discuss here. Suffice to say, that society or urban living is the status quo, yet deeply unsatisfactory to many. So, the reaction is to combine urban living with a nomadic lifestyle in a modern conveyance. Migrating from one urban environment to another, or within one urban environment, alone, simplified to only what a covered wagon can carry, but driving a gas car. It makes no sense. Migrants in covered wagons were not migrating endlessly. They did live in and out of their covered wagon, but it was a necessity of the times. Now we're combining the 1860 era covered wagon lifestyle inside a modern vehicle, but literally driving in the tracks of history, either in reverse or otherwise. What the fuck? It's a messy solution and I can justify it because I intend to deconstruct the larger disease by providing myself isolation to focus. That's the only justification I can accept: you desire to withdraw from society. The reason you want to withdraw can be your own. The reasons are all variations of the same quest for contentment and belonging, contradicted by a suspicion you don't belong. I get it. But if this is not your reason then you will be distressed to learn that's what's going to happen no matter what you want. You will withdraw, you will drift, you will migrant, you won't belong, and that's why I don't recommend you choose to live in a van. You are choosing exile whether you think you are or not.

Now, if you want exile, as I do, then you have no choice because other styles of living will draw you back to society. But living in a van will alienate you from the bulk of society and it may be irreversible. I prefer to warn people of what they might be getting themselves into rather than tell them how to stay warm in the winter. Exile is the fate that waits for the one who lives in a van.

When I started the van blog in 2008 I was not aware of any online community of van dwellers reporting their experiences. Am I a pioneer? That's for history to judge. I've lived in vehicles off and on for 20 years, but ever since the covered wagon people have been living in vehicles. But the idea of reporting on the lifestyle is very new because except for a few rare essays that record the lifestyle, no one could very well film their entire life, edit it, and upload it to a public theater that anyone can watch at any time. Well, that's now possible. It was possible probably as early as 2006, when tube video formats began. Well, that would mean I was a 1st generation van blogger because 2007 was probably the earliest anyone had the idea to video and write a diary about living in a van, and one year later I made my first entry without having seen a single example of someone else doing something similar. In fact, I remember blogging about my plans to move into a van on a totally different blog, and it crossed my mind that with my digital camera and the video option on blogger, which I had lazily been updating since I moved to Los Angeles in 2004. So, the acceleration is obvious: 2004-first Oggy Blog. 2007-first easy youtube option. 2008 - Oggy moves into van and begins to blog about life in van for next 8 years. 2016 - Hundreds and hundreds of van dwelling bloggers actually funding their trip with donations. I didn't consider starting a channel on youtube because I am a writer and the video aspect was more for the music and some skits I was developing. I prefer the format of blogs to write essays, long form discussions and analysis. But I also accept this was bad instincts on my part. youtube channels with interesting videos, characters, skits, good music and good footage is the accepted model to gain an audience. If your desire is to 'go viral' then youtube is the way to do it, refine your abilities to connect via video essays or skits. As a writer I want to think the internet is a means to communicate longer essays, but this is not true in the case of van dwelling. People in general are visual, and van dwelling has the element of action that only video can capture. The deeper analysis is possible through an essay, but only if the writing is good. I wonder if my writing will last as digital cave scrawling. I don't know. I've seen a lot of average attempts to be entertaining...that reminds me of my first mandate: entertain. When I started the blog I had to decide how I was going to frame the entries. What was my attitude? At first it was theatrical, and false. I was trying a personality out that I thought might be entertaining. I only leave those posts published to demonstrate my humble beginnings. I was aiming for a comedy skit but the first posts seem more desperate and false. Being homeless reduced the way I could write, and I had no mobile access so everything involved a visit to the library for free internet access. It was tedious, nothing like today where kids post their morning videos instantly, live chatting their breakfast, instantly edit videos. It took me hours to post anything and it involved many attempts to upload the video and them embed the link. It didn't work many times and required more than one attempt. It was new and tedious and I only persevered because I thought it would be at least a good record of my origins with the van so I could look back on it. I thought the idea itself had potential but that fortune would never make my blog popular. Maybe my blog isn't popular because I write too much, too many words, not entertaining enough for the short attention span. Yes, I can see that.

I don't ever see myself accepting donations because it poisons my creativity. I'm not above taking money, but the idea distracts me and affects my thought process and creative output. So, the cost is not worth the benefit.

I'm rambling because it's late and I've become nocturnal and there is mold growing on my ego and I want to memorize the melody to Tangerine, and I love Nat King Cole.