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.