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.