Friday, January 31, 2014

Drawing


Milk Cow said that Bobby is chasing chickens in heaven now. I've been told that anyone can draw but I have my doubts sometimes. The real problem is knowing what to draw but Bobby's last moment is what I would draw if I could. To capture the story behind the story is something I can do with words but if you can do it with a single picture then you've done something.

Those are chicken shaped clouds that only Bobby can see.
"Goodbye, Bobby."

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Milk Cow Has Some Stories

The dog (Bobby) living at Milk Cow's apartment had a rough life and a quick exit. In his own words, this is Milk Cow's description...

"Had to take care of Bobby myself, neither F. nor R.would spend 37 dollars to have him put to sleep..i had to deal with it ..his back was broke his legs spread apart he had to drag himself..he wouldn't eat i couldnt see him suffer and freeze..i got him some milk and talked to him and when he turned away i hit him with shovel..died instantly.."

I want to make this a country song but I'm a coward and a rat and a hypocrite. I'm sure Milk Cow would let you have the lyrics.

I told Milk Cow that I'd do the same for him and he said he would hide the shovels next time I saw him. And you can put that in the song too.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Death Or Glory

Every morning I basically run with the bulls at Pamplona. The truckers call Interstate 20 "The Highway of Death" and to get to that highway I have to dodge coyotes, trucks and roadrunners and raccoons while my man tits jiggle courtesy of the hormones injected into my fake pork sandwich at the truck stop where my meals are paid for by big oil.
The fire department was too busy with a major tanker truck accident a mere mile east from here to put this minor fire out.
 I was trying to find a job site and I called for help and these were the directions...

"You see the smoke?"
"Yeah."
"We're a mile east of there."
"Ok. Who died?"
"No one I know."

This Clash song isn't about the oil field, it's actually a clever song dedicated to youthful braggadocio.

I was stuck behind a funeral procession for a dead trucker and I was peeling out in the dirt looking for an alternative route..."Motherfucker had to get buried today?" I yelled unsympathetically. "Oil Never Sleeps" is my new motto.
I've seen the light of how ignorant and self centered the generic populace is to allow this exploitation to go on and then condemn men living in vans preaching simplicity. Finally, I'm selfish like the rest of America, eating half a sandwich and throwing it away because I'm full, since it's paid for by someone else it's like I can shrug off any responsibility. Handjob afternoons and kiss the wife goodnight. My principles are on sale in Aisle 3 with the bulk Chex mix. Like children we defend ourselves from our biggest fears with self deception and numb ourselves with calories and alcohol. A generation of Fox news pawns with augmented reality glasses to replace the real reality that includes how their sand castle virtues are being swept away with the latest celebrity cellulite story. It's laughable, but accepting the truth would cause chaos so the apathetic stupor of drugs is the best alternative we have. Generic zombies watching international news that looks more and more like "America's Funniest Home Videos" Energy is my goal and if the Super Bowl game uses more energy than Haiti then I guess that's why God chose America to embrace.


The Clash were working class rockers. They didn't hide their accents and never cleaned up their act. They died with needles in their arm.
I love The Clash because they never let success get in the way of their disdain for the world.

"Now every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world,
Ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl.
Love 'n hate tattooed across the knuckles of his hands,
 Hands that slap his kids around, 'cause they don't understand how,
 Death or glory, becomes just another story.
Death or glory, becomes just another story. "

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Another Day Another Brake Project


stubborn rusted bolts
all the brake line is rusted and Oggy is on his back again in the Texas dust trying to get rusted fittings off of 45 year old brake hubs. I did learn that the bleeder screw can be left in the wheel cylinder if it is too rusted to get out. Get a new wheel cylinder and leave the bleeder screw alone...and there is a pressure differential valve that has a warning light that might've told me I'd lost all the pressure in the rear brakes so when the front brakes failed I would have no brakes at all. But that warning system is long gone...so it was quite a surprise when I lost my brakes. In the past few years if I'd lost my brakes at one of several hundred dangerous locations Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevadas, Mexican desert, Labrador forest...New York Parkway...I'd've died. But it happened on a flat road in Texas. I mean, the brakes were gone. I learned that the rear brake cylinders were barely working and the front lost all fluid, so I had nothing. The parking brake would've done nothing. I downshift and then bite the bullet and put it in park, maybe destroy the transmission trying to save my life.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Music 30 Years Ago

Gather 'round youngsters because Uncle Oggy wants to tell you about a time long long ago before the internet and basically before home computers when everything you learned about the world was either on the radio, TV or some Junior High School teacher would make you memorize the countries of Africa for no reason. That time was 1984, the year Orwell wrote about in a dystopian novel that basically came true but Orwell foolishly supposed people would give a fuck. The Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles but most of Europe boycotted them because the U.S. had boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, which we feared then as "The Soviet Union" but now know was a total fraud, like our economy. Here we are 30 years later and the kings are still fucking around with the pawns and gay rights in Russia and our economy is still a fraud and we're talking about boycotting another Russian Olympics. Not much changes...except music. Because 1984 pop music could only exist in 1984.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Country Gospel

Beside The Still Waters
Music by Ted Silva

Friday, January 17, 2014

Religion or no Religion?


I was a little startled to read bout a group of marauding Buddhists...

"More than a dozen people may have been killed after a Buddhist group rampaged through a town in an isolated corner of Myanmar, hacking Muslim women and children with knives, a rights group reported Friday." 


I was reminded of the old argument against religion that wars are fought over religion and it causes so much grief. I probably ascribed to that naive and narrow minded conclusion at one point in my self education but now I see it as exactly the opposite: Religion had little to do with this and similar events. In fact, it's the absence of religion that led to this event. This is what happens when people are atheists but wear the clothes of a religious person. This is atheism at work, not religion. Myanmar is primarily "Muslim" but in this one small area the majority of "Buddhists" have congregated and they decided to try to violently evict the small minority of Muslims. Calling these people Buddhists is like calling me a Justin Bieber fan (Be-lieber) because I listen to the radio...and the radio also plays songs by Justin Bieber? I don't have an opinion of Justin Bieber. I know he exists and records music but I have pre-sorted his music to the skip section of my brain based on my strong suspicion that he has nothing to tell me that I'll be interested in. Although I can't forget the summer and fall of 2012 when I was forced to listen to this annoying song about 1000 times during my 5 hour commute to and from oil tank batterys.
I guess getting paid $37/hr to listen to crap dance music is the American Dream.


Christopher Hitchens made a career from misinterpreting religion and then debating priests. It must've been nice to grow up an affluent westerner who never got his hands dirty and then to cast judgement on the battle to survive for the other 99% of humanity, who occasionally need faith in something ethereal to support them...and to do all of this from the comfortable seat of flabby punditry. I wonder how many atheists are Guatemalan coffee pickers, sweating all day on a hill for $1 so Starbucks can package their latest sugar and caffeine cocktail for the cool hipsters coding HTML e-commerce sites all day long in San Mateo. It really must be awesome to have that kind of spare time that you can fly around and pick your nose in haughty arrogance and fling it at the sun-baked believers. His arguments were about as flimsy as the latest Malcolm Gladwell theory (in fact only a Christian minister would look dumb debating him) but they gave all the atheists a warm feeling to know they shared the same delusions as a depressed British drunk and it gave the devout a warm feeling to know they were going to heaven and Hitchens was going to hell.

I've been playing from my hymnal lately because the music is about at my level of ability on the piano and the melodies are soothing, they bring me peace in a troubled time. We're adrift in the universe on the brink of extinction and the presence of religion is a relief from the maw of oblivion. So tell me how religion caused men in Myanmar to hack women to death, show me the teachings of Allah and Buddha that led to such an outburst. Or is it the hijacking of religion for secular ends that is to blame, like aviation can not be to blame for planes being flown into buildings on purpose, or how football can not be to blame for football coaches molesting players. The news reports a religious massacre...it labels religions mainly because journalists make their living off low-lying fruit and their audience is dumb hairless apes who scratch their ass while watching football...but is this the root cause or merely the jerseys the opponents were wearing, the mascara of deluded beasts? Wasn't it the absence of devotion, the absence of religious fervor, the denial of Allah's and Buddha's words, that drove the men to abandon their practice and take up knives? Religious crusades are packaged like frosted flakes so people will approve of them, but it amounts to a religious vacuum, not a wellspring. Hitchens was a skeptic and so am I; I'm skeptical when someone writes about Buddhists wielding knives. I once went to a Buddhist church in Mountain View, California and the focus was on tea and soybean curd and candles. Like Malcolm X said, "You can put a shoe in an oven but that doesn't make it a biscuit."

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Remember This One?

I heard this on the radio today and was immediately transported back to when I was 9 years old and my nose was running and my corduroy pants ended around my shin bone and I wore action stripes socks and had bad teeth and we played Smear The Queer in the Little Harbor field...and my underwear was always dirty. I liked baseball cards and stuff with Star Wars on it and ate nothing but Twinkies and gum. Really good song. Simplicity and honesty with good execution. The dirt band always satisfied.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Out Yonder

"...and the skies are not cloudy all day..."

Where buffalo (cibolo) once roamed
"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful."

Monday, January 13, 2014

Metric Misery

I deal with a lot of Standard bolt measurements every day and I've come to the conclusion that SAE is not fundamentally worse or better than Metric. The main problem came along when some engineer decided to reduce fractions like 1/4...which is really 2/8...or 4/16...or 8/32. BUT FOR SOME STRANGE REASON THE SAME ENGINEER Used a different denominator for different sizes such as 3/8. So you go from 1/4 to 3/8. Why didn't they leave both as a denominator of 8? Then it would be 2/8 and then 3/8. Then 4/8...which is 1/2. So, my conclusion, when I open my own tool manufacture company in Mexico...is to go sequentially with only 32 as the denominator.
So it will be 8/32...10/32....12/32...14/32..16/32...18/32....20/32.....22/32...24/32...26/32...28/32...30/32...1 inch.
See? sequential increase by 2.

None of this insane 5/16, 3/8, 3/4 nonsense.


Metric works because it is sequential...and standard fractions have different denominators...so a 3/8 actually bigger than a 5/16...3 being bigger than 5 because the division of 8 is smaller than the division of 16. Does that make sense?

I only bring this up because the brake pedal of my van hit the floor today at high speed and put some more grey hairs on my aging face...and I'm trying to figure out the size of my brake line...1/4 or 3/8..because the Mexican beach salt finally caught up with the 45 year old stainless.

Accident Analysis II

"The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the accident was the flightcrew’s failure to use the taxi checklist to ensure that the flaps and slats were extended for takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the absence of electrical power to the airplane takeoff warning system which thus did not warn the flightcrew that the airplane was not configured properly for takeoff. The reason for the absence of electrical power could not be determined."

Keeping with my plane crash theme, some people watch true crime stories and murder mystery reenactments but I like to read Aircraft Accident Reports.


I think the reason I like to read these documents is because they are written for the layman with footnotes to define terms I might not understand like "Heading Bug" but the incidents/accidents are outside of my career path. However; the principles that are under the microscope are completely human and apply to any field, including oil field electrician. Reading one of these reports would benefit everyone.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Musical Rescue

I was way up in the sky on the man lift working on a cursed set screw for an LED light fixture that required me to drill it out with zip ties holding my fear in check...and I was pondering at the same time which musician I'd go back in time to save because I was so high I could almost see the airport where the plane carrying Jim Croce hit a pecan tree and ended the life of a musician about to enter his prime years of production. Or more correctly, if I could go back in time only once with the mission to save a musician, which would I choose? And while I would recommend anyone with this mission to please go back and save Buddy Holly and Richie Valens and The Big Bopper from getting on that plane in Iowa, I feel that I'd have to go back in time to save John Lennon. I don't know if I can morally quantify Lennon's value over the three lost in Iowa, or why not save the three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd who died in a plane crash? Well, I had to limit myself in my frivolous daydreams and my reasons are my own.

And with drug overdoses and general misbehavior and suicides of musicians I feel these are not preventable...you'd only postpone the inevitable. Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Brian Jones, Cobain were living right on the edge and that was part of their personality and fed their talent. It's a price of fame that some can only tolerate it for so long before they step over the line into oblivion. If you make a woman like Janis Joplin play by the rules and eat her vegetables then you won't get another Crystal Gayle...no. I don't know what you'll get but it won't be Janis Joplin and that's life. And Robert Johnson, for instance, was probably murdered a year after recording the foundations of modern blues but the life he led basically guaranteed an early death. Nothing short of shadowing Johnson as his personal body guard for the remainder of his life would prolong his career. But John Lennon wasn't living on the edge and I think he had much more to contribute to the world. It's a morbid poll but I thought it would engage me for a minute and would give me an idea of the musical ethics of my audience.


What Musical Tragedy Would You Prevent?
  
pollcode.com free polls 

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Hateful Pundits

If I had to sit next to someone smoking cigarettes while listening to this then that would be like when I was in the Merchant Marines. This is actually what the welders listen to in the morning and I want to bash my skull in on the high pressure separator. The best argument I have to prove these assholes are assholes is because they will proudly crow like roosters that America is becoming the next Cuba and all white people need to arm themselves etc etc and then in the same breath they will talk about the most irrelevant Miley Cyrus trivial gossip. I have the same reaction toward them as fundamental Christians...which is if it's that bad then why talk about anything else? Why go on a tour bus and listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd songs, why eat, why talk about football? AMERICA IS BEING INFILTRATED BY A COMMUNIST PRESIDENT. That sounds serious so maybe take it seriously and don't dilute your ignorant hate speech with topical trivia. Walton & Johnson, total assholes. I actually push the ear plugs HARD into my ears so that I don't have to listen to even one word of their ignorant drawling fucking cunt bullshit. They are hateful people and pure pundits inciting hate and diseased thinking. Arrogance compounded by ignorance.

I fantasize about calling them and telling them I am forced to listen to their bubbling vomit thoughts and that maybe they should hit the pause button on the spin doctor dildo they are spinning wildly around on and they must be sponsored by some kind of monster to spread poison like mayonnaise on the white bread of America. These are exactly the kind of cunts who croak like hoarse toads about the central American refugees swimming the river to reach America and steal money and health care and food stamps and jobs from "true Americans" while completely ignoring or selectively forgetting that from Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Ford to Carter to Reagan to Bush ALL willfully executed a withering attack on the economies of Honduras and Guatemala and undermined the sovereignty of Panama and Nicaragua and Chile and Argentina, ensuring a populace too broken to refuse to sew 60'' waist underwear destined for the fat man stores of American malls, blatantly seeking to overthrow agrarian-based administrations in favor of the purely exploitative hegemonic government that was thrown out of Cuba by Che and Castro...which turned out to be a minor victory in the defense of freedom in 40 years of total domination by the stars and stripes. And then when the chickens come home to roost and the economically savaged children of the families who were torn apart by CIA induced civil war ALL FLEE THEIR OWN SWEAT SHOP COUNTRIES you add insult to injury by calling them thieves for coming to America, the source of all their pain. Because I'm sure they are too dumb to realize that they are begging the lord of the castle for crumbs and they also need hicks with wide mouths calling them dirt. And the entire problem was caused by an ignorant and obese populace gorging on their own back fat steak fried chicken fried delusions of deceit...which is then denied..because we and not the Levites or Hebrews or Ishmaelites are the chosen people and can do anything we want to anyone and then complain when the imported Mexican cotton pickers plead for more pennies. So disgusting. But it's free speech, Y'all, so that's the good news. With talk radio like this who needs Al Queda?

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Resin

Bella's mom scraped the chipped glass pipe with a sewing needle that Oggy had left behind when he went to find scrap aluminum to fix the hotel room heater circuit board. Her slightly hairy lips were an inch above the pipe and she murmured in meditation to herself softly singing a lullaby, a comforting song her own mother had sung to her back in Bakersfield. The pipe had been scraped within the last week but because Ched's SSI check had been stolen from the mattress by the hotel maid there was no money for heroin. Ched was pounding the streets in the evening rain, shaking down debtors and stray fags for quarters, Oggy was in the alleyway, distracted by those damn cats who were breeding, ranting about sterilization and a capitalist conspiracy, Bella was in the bath tub where the candles burned dangerously close to the off white Chinese imported towels. The couple in the next door had finally passed out after three days of rolling on Ecstasy, babbling about broken dreams and funerals for sock puppets...so Bella's mom had found time alone to embrace her happiest pass-time scraping the pipe for resin, the slight scratch of the needle on the glass, the audible smacking of the tar building up on the needle head, Bella's playful splashing in the tub, her childish humming, like when she was much younger. The exotic aroma of heroin tar coming from the pipe made Bella's mom's tongue snake out of her lips seeking the saliva trapped inside the resin, that only a flame could release. The monotone hum from the broken television and the sounds of Bella stepping out of the tub were Romantic symphonies compared to the hateful abuse Ched offered and the ponderous philosophic musings of Oggy. The universe would provide, she knew, she was a survivor, her family was important to her and when her son got out of prison then she'd take them back to Bakersfield and really build a life again. Because she would do whatever it took to protect them and give them everything she had.
Bella stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her pale skin reddened by the hot water, freckles multiplied, her strawberry blond hair flat against her back, innocent and clean, all the dirt and sand and sin of the city draining into the sewer.
"Bella, I scraped the pipe and I want you to have the first hit."
Bella bounced on her toes and went through the motions of a ballerina move, impressing her mother, reminding each other of classes and performances long gone.
"In a minute," she responded.
"OK, but you know how Oggy gets, talking about Afghanistan exploitation and the costs of drug shipment and donkeys dying in snowy mountains and war..."
"Uh huh." Bella smiled. Oggy sounded so smart and convincing when he opined about global drug trade, spirituality, cults, organic gardening, socialized medicine, non-violent revolution.
Bella toweled herself dry, naked before her mother but unashamed. They could do anything together.
"Anything you need, Bell, and I'll get it for you," said Bella's mom. "Anything."
Bella looked in the mirror, studied her profile, pretended she was pregnant by pushing her belly out and holding it with her hands. The last of the water drained out of the tub, the hair and blood and skin and dirt all washed away. After a bath you could start over and the past aborted.
"Where did you get those bruises on your legs," asked Bella's mom as she saw the blue splotches of coagulating blood beneath Bella's thighs.
"Oh, Oggy beats me at night."

Thursday, January 2, 2014

2014: The Year Oggy Gets His Priorities Straight

How this will fit in my trailer and van remains to be seen

*Special thanks to all the Craigslist sellers who deliriously price used digital pianos higher than a brand new keyboard so that I spend less money going to Guitar Center and getting them to price match a package online. The lesson is this: Don't Stop Believing.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Wow

The slight step up in melody at :20 and 1:16 is so classic, so completely 1980s (even though the song is from 1978). The chorus does have the power, but that little melody in the verse is so perfect to my ear that I'm not even going to whine jealously about the bass guitarist's awesome disco shirt.




I want to follow up on this. Basically, my theory is that little climbing melody signals the beginning of 80s music. Until then disco and rock were totally content with sustaining the first note he sings on that chord. By climbing notes on the same word, turning "saved" and "night" into multi-syllabic words you are hearing the start of the vocal acrobatics that would define Def Leppard and Motley Crue's sound and especially Survivor. who blatantly stole this melodic extension. This song is the missing link between music of the 1970s and the 1980s. I also want to suggest that pianist Greg Rolie might've been listening to Boston's first album when he wrote this song.
Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.