Current Events/New Rants

I don't want to stoop to the level of a commentator on current events that are reported on CNN or Fox because I can only offer my opinion and not actual experiences. See, anyone who followed my trip around Newfoundland and Labrador probably saw more first person content about those places than if they watched CNN for 200 years straight. I like that. I wasn't offering distilled opinions on regurgitated take out food. I was telling you my experiences in addition to my opinion.
Now, if I want to opinionate on the Occupy Wall Street protests then I'm just being a big mouth. I don't know what is happening down there any more than the Santa Cruz newspapers told the truth about the Food Not Bombs protests. So I can't have an informed opinion...but I do anyway and here it is. Better to give it now when I am young and mentally nimble rather wait until I'm old and senile.

The problem is that there is a criminal element in the financial management of the country. It is a fraud. The mortgage meltdown was basically a byproduct of a decade long land-grab buffet that a small cartel of politicians and financial managers and land brokers pulled off at the expense of me and you. They understood that there was no way their actions would have no consequences but they also understood that possession is 9/10ths of the law and if they owned the land then no one was going to ask HOW THEY OWNED THE LAND.
Go ask the Loathsome Lou Pai how he was able to become the #1 landowner in Colorado.
He bought it with California pensions stolen from swindled utility workers who lost every penny in their retirement funds and ended up repairing power lines until they were 95 years old.

So, my point is that Lou Pai represents the false wealth created by 20 years of corporate/political grab ass...and the occupy wall street protesters are justified in their resentment of him and his loathsome ilk. Pai and Jeffery Skilling and Kenneth Lay are the worst element in America. Only a nation of stoned television junkies would allow them to live.

However; the loathsomeness of Lou Pai has nothing to do with someones decision to be an Art History major at NYU and then turn their nose up at unpaid internships in rent-friendly Arkansas so they can live in Greenwich Village and drink $5 coffees and take a taxi home when they get drunk 50 blocks from their apartment...and thus end up with $40K in student loans, no hope of owning a NY condo, no job skills, a caffeine addiction, and some pants that are too tight. I mean, there is no way these protestors are similar to the army veterans who marched on Washington in 1932 to demand their service bonus. Playing Call of Duty for five hours a day doesn't qualify you for the VFW. Times are different.
I know this sounds like Rick Scott has been whispering in my ear when I'm asleep but I've come to believe that Dr. Zhivago was right, "Poetry is no more suitable a career than philosophy". Dr. Zhivago is a poet but he paid the bills (until the revolution) with medicine.
Now, I am personally useless for any occupation except creative writing but that's my own failure to develop marketable skills. I could've been a dentist! Or a water quality engineer. Or Mechanical Engineer. I even wanted to be a Park Ranger for a few months but didn't like the idea of wearing a gun. Who is to blame for my insane plan to be a violinist in an Orchestra when I didn't know how to play the violin? I could've had any degree I wanted but I felt an overpowering desire to put my nose on the ground of America and learn first hand what it stood for. I wanted to be the next John Steinbeck. But even Steinbeck and Hemingway served in the Army. Even Kerouac was a Merchant Marine. My hero William Vollmann was an I.T. technician before getting into creative writing and investigative journalism. And those four are the top .000000001% of writers and none of them can hold a candle to Hermann Hesse who could barely keep a job at a bookstore. I'm somewhere in the middle percentage of a billion anonymous bloggers. So does that mean the crooked CEOs are to blame for my lack of employment? God no. Does it mean America is some kind of Objectivist utopia? No.

Like I said, nothing pardons Lou Pai for his despicable, unforgivable, criminal action...which is why the protest is a bit messy. Saying, "Lou Pai is a loathsome criminal who should be hung like Saddam Hussein's rabid dog!" is totally different than saying, "The distribution of wealth is unequal."

In Santa Cruz we were all guilty of saying something to the effect of, "Too few people have too much money and land." And I think we were all trying to simplify a topic that was too complicated for our stoned brains. The Lou Pai scenario (raid pension funds, cash out of company seconds before the bubble bursts, buy most of Colorado, sell most of Colorado, breed horses in Houston) is the height of villainous conduct, while your average wealthy person basically took old money, invested it wisely, pushed the rules to the limit, busted his ass all day and night, took no prisoners and tried to come out on top of every deal. Chuck and David Koch are carelessly polluting rivers but most American corporations aren't directly involved in the plundering of the environment. So they can't be lumped together or else you end up acting like some dirty smurfs all in the name of social equality.*

Small business owners, most CEOs, bear no resemblance to Lou Pai or the Koch bros. and should not be on the gallows with them. But the fucked up thing is that Lou Pai probably sold his land to someone who didn't plunder pension funds for his wealth. But now that land is worth what Lou Pai sold it for even though that's like saying if I rob a bank and pay $5000 for a hooker to give me a piggyback ride through Market Square then that's what everyone should pay for a piggyback ride. Like, that's the going rate now. See, Lou Pai had no value for his money because it was pure pirate's booty. You want to know why lap dances cost $200 in Colorado? Thank Lou Pai. Lap dances are $7.50 in Mexico because THAT'S WHAT THEY ARE WORTH. But when you have people throwing around free pension funds like it's monopoly money then prices tend to go up. And this is all tied into the resentment fueling the protests in NY.

Los Angeles housing prices rocketed up 400% while I was there. This was the three years before the meltdown when I had mortgage brokers saying they could find a way to get me a mortgage on a $1.3 million house. My income? An unofficial $14,000 a year. They were all in bed with one another trying to inflate prices so those selling would bank a big wad of phony money and those buying could hide huge sums of their phony capital gains. Oggy was a pig in the poke. The house he lived in got sold three times while he was living there and the last guy ended up giving it to a person who may not have existed so he could claim the loss and still sell the house through the fake identity. I think this sums up the mortgage meltdown: I lived in a house and no one knew who owned it, but it was for sale for $1.8 million and worth $300K. The bubble burst and the $1.3 million house sank to $800K but if you think about it even that is too much to live where helicopters chase drug mules and immigrants through alleys stuffed with stoned gypsies living in vans. (Ha! The dollar symbol above 2004 in the picture is the exact date Oggy moved into that house)

I'm getting off track. See, that's the problem. This is so complicated that Michael Moore hasn't covered the whole topic with eight different movies. So, there is no way in Hell the Occupy Wall Street hipsters are going to succinctly describe their grievances. No chance. Don't expect them to. The current status of the global economy and the financial coup that destroyed Congress can't be summed up on a piece of cardboard stapled to a broomstick.

Unfortunately, unfortunately, we live in a capitalist country where commerce is the only engine of change. I think about the pipeline set to stretch from Alberta to Texas. Do I really think that if that particular pipeline does not get approved then the oil will stay in Alberta? The petroleum engineers will all become Amish organic gardeners? Ha! THEY WILL GET THAT OIL OUT OF THE GROUND AND IN CARS AT ALL COSTS!
So, the pipeline is incidental. We had a saying in Santa Cruz that I happily donate to the protestors in NY: "OUTGROW THE GOVERNMENT!" OUTGROW WALL STREET!"
It was a play on the "OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT!" saying that caused us pacifists to grimace when we heard it. Basically, when the government is useless then it will cease to exist. So promote a world that governs itself. Hahahah. I just had a flashback to the point in my life when I fervently believed that was possible. Hahaha. I guess the tie-dye shirt has permanently shrunk. So, If I don't want that pipeline plan then the best thing to do is figure out a better and safer and cheaper way to get the oil from Alberta to Texas. And I could do that if I had a degree in Petroleum Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and was a genius. Skills are still the best commodity in the world.

Anyway, the solution that I seem to think about now (since "outgrowing the government" is as unlikely as a Lou Pai College Scholarship For Strippers being awarded to Hillary Clinton) is to play by the rules of commerce and isolate a market to dominate with your own business. There is no chance the stock market will clean itself up because some hipsters take offense to the disparate balance of wealth.

I watched the movie Wall Street over the winter and to make an honest dollar in America you have to be the smartest guy in the room. And when everyone is pretty smart then you need to have an extra edge which involves planting false information to mislead everyone else. And when that doesn't work then you have to get insider information and leverage that. It's not easy to make a buck. And when the dollar is king then hipsters with big hearts and skinny jeans will be treated no differently than LSD queens on Haight Street. They say they represent the 99% who don't own 90% of the wealth. Well, I wonder what my New England Yankee grandfather Sam Stevens would say if a hipster with purple hair and a pierced eyebrow said, "I REPRESENT SAM STEVENS!"
Uh, I'm pretty sure my grandpop would say, "Get the hell off my lawn before I grab my shotgun."

Now, Sam didn't scam a single person his whole life and he didn't sell a car for a penny more than it was worth and probably never made a dime from any land exchange, BUT HE ALSO NEVER MISSED A DAY OF WORK OR WAS FIRED FOR SMOKING POT.

So, no, a NY hipster does not represent Sam and he doesn't represent the truck drivers who cross the country hauling freight and he doesn't represent Coast Guard navigators or Policemen or dentists or independent gas station owners in Illinois. He doesn't even represent me. He represents a ridiculously small minority of disillusioned hipsters who think they are too good for the assembly line and scarf up food picked by illegal immigrants.

THIS IS NOT TO SAY LOU PAI SHOULD BE FORGIVEN. No. That's a completely separate issue. I guess it comes down to this: The protestors are right, and they should shut up and start their own businesses. Because that's the best way to get back at Lou Pai. Wall Street morality wasn't written into the constitution and it can be replaced. BUT SOMEONE HAS TO REPLACE IT.

Oh, my dream in this life is to be installing a solar panel grid after the petroleum and nuclear power industries go belly up and my crew walks up to a huge, dark and depressing estate with sprawling lawns and hedges and a worn and tired grey haired man hustles out with big smiles.
"I'm so glad you're finally here! We have no power, no food, no hope. We'll never survive without power! We're saved!"
And I smile and nod and say, "That's what we're here for, Mr...." and I look at the installation invoice and read, "HOMEOWNER: LOU PAI"

Then my smile would split my face. I get chills just thinking about how happy I would be. I laugh loudly and the man is slightly confused.
"Lou Pai?" I say. "Lou Pai? Ah, we've got a special for you, Mr. Pai. You can lick the sweat off my balls while your whore wife gives me the best blowjob of my life but we will never install solar panels on your house. Boys! I want everyone to take a shit on Mr. Pai's lawn and then we are getting out of here."

"But I've got money! I'll pay!" whines the desperate Lou Pai throwing hundred dollar bills at me like I'm a skinny stripper with fake tits and hair extensions.

I say, "Then take your fucking money and give it back to the utility workers in California you pathetic crook. I wouldn't show you how to screw in a lightbulb."

Because that would be the ultimate revenge: To have the one thing a dirtbag like that needs and refuse to serve him for any price. And how is that going to happen if you have an art history degree?

*I'd still laugh if the Occupy Wall Street protestors morph into the next Khmer Rouge. That would be the ultimate, ultimate irony. Oggy is sent to a forced labor farm by a Hipster Revolution to hoe beans . Hahahaha.
"But I agree with you! We should all work on farms!" I'd yell.
"Shut up, you bourgeois scum! You think you're better than us? Back to work!"
And the whip would crack on Oggy's arthritic back. Hahaha. I'm totally writing that updated version of Dr. Zhivago.

Top Five Common Mistakes

hardworker said...

top 5 common mistakes next please"

The man in the van always aims to please his loyal public. Now, since it would be difficult to list the top 5 common mistakes made by everyone, I'm going to list my own top 5 mistakes. I'm a narcissist anyway and I'm only comfortable writing about myself. 

"I see the world through a small hole in a huge mirror," I once said.

But then I read that all artists have this affliction. There are two worlds they constantly juggle, the one that happens and the one they reflect on for later reflection. And I go out of my way to reflect ad-nauseaum because I think it will get me to think like Hermann Hesse. That is number 1 in my top five mistakes.

1. Intentionally reflecting/pondering about life in order to develop the self-reflective mastery as found in a Hermann Hesse novel. "If mental masturbation were an Olympic sport," someone once said to me, "You'd win the gold medal."

2. Falling in love with women who are totally indifferent to my love for them. This has caused me so many problems I could write a textbook on co-dependency and its pitfalls. The first chapter would be titled "You Aren't in Love With Anything but Your Own Ability to Arbitrarily Manufacture Unhealthy Dependencies"

3. Intentionally not using all the tools at my disposal because I want to "test my ability to adapt." This has only hindered my projects. If Survivor accepts me then this might turn out to be useful. Otherwise it was foolish. It's like I'm an engineer with a superiority complex and low self-esteem and a tight wallet.

4. I watched a program about a serial killer and the main point the investigators made was the killer had an impeccable ability to "compartmentalize" in the sense that his violent murder of a dozen strangers in his own town had no affect on his ability to live, go to church, raise kids. Homicidal tendencies are totally unrelated to this ability. I'd say that this compartmentalization skill is essential for soldiers, cops, doctors, actors and very important for the rest of us.  I must've been absent from class the day they taught it because I really can not separate any part of life into an isolated region in my mind. Whether I crimp wires to pins or play guitar, that activity will resonate with me for years or at least until it finds a permanent place in my ever-expanding worldview. Ex: I wanted to be a trapper in Alaska so I bought some rabbit jaw traps and set them with granola bait and a day or two later I went back and I had caught a Snowshoe Hare. Yeah, what a big hero I was. The animal had not been killed by the initial trap snapping and breaking his forelegs in half, so it had chewed its own legs off and then limped away on stumps a few yards and died. I skinned it and made a memorial hat of its fur. I kept one of his big snowshoe hind feet "for good luck" even as I considered the family of rabbits that depended on him to return with food that dark winter night and never saw him again.
This still weighs heavily on me and for that reason I would say it is a mistake that I can not put that in a box labeled "Oggy being dumb" and close the box and go to work as a pool cleaner or something. If there's a Hell then that bunny and his friends are waiting for me there. Maybe it isn't a "mistake"  to allow the weight of the imperfect world to weigh heavily upon my conscience, but it does. Or maybe it is my defense of this affliction that is the mistake which is related to #1.Or maybe...

5. I'll cop out and say this mistake is a combination of all the other 4. Is it called procrastination if you plan something out for so long that the original reason for planning has become obsolete? Or is that good planning? It took me so long to figure out how to attach screen material to my escape hatch that all the bugs in Labrador died. It took me so long to write the novel about the 68 Year World Championship drought of the Red Sox that they won a world championship after 86 years. But when I ultimately wrote the book I think it is basically what I wanted to write. Sometimes it is better to do things you are too dumb to know would be difficult. Because the chances are good you will actually figure out how to get them done rather than quit. But if you think about things too much and do some research and get informed then it's very easy to know too much and quit before even starting.

I think humanity owes its existence to young people having unprotected sex. Because once you grow up and realize the diseases and other consequences of bareback sex then your whole approach changes. If reproduction were left up to mature, sober adults then mankind would be extinct in one generation. Fortunately, like John Updike said, "New people keep showing up thinking the fun has just begun." In most cases it's better to be too dumb to know when to quit. Hell, the most fun I've had is when I didn't know what trouble I was getting myself into. So I guess my mistake is trying to be prepared.

These seem kind of generic. Maybe I was supposed to be more specific. I think this list is a work in progress.

Leaves of Change

Returning to a semblance of normalcy in the land of 40 houses/40 lawnmowers is a process of decompression that is never easy. I live in a van, see, and it is actually easier to continue living in the van and picking apples and fighting my demons in coarse anonymity than wearing plaid bell bottom pants and motoring around town on my 1974 Vespa Ciao looking for respectable work. Hell, I was more motivated to write blog posts when I was in the middle of Nova Scotia and Internet access was 100 km away than when the computer is 5ft from my face and I have nothing to say. I cleaned up my act and the parade is over. Even clowns have to take their makeup off and then they blend in.

What now? I want to finish my rug hooking project that has me wondering how I'm going to define the outlines of those stars with 1/8 inch strips of wool.

The crow hardly looks like a crow and most people will think those yellow and red leaves are animals. And you can't see the moon and the crow feet because the wool I used is off white and blends in too well with the burlap. Let's hope it pops out a bit better when I put in the violet background. This reminds me of the mosaic tile project when I realized that you can only define sharp outlines with tiny pieces and tiny pieces means you will be on your swollen knees in pain for hours upon hours. I need to reevaluate my plan to get rich off rug hooking.

What have I done so far?
Consolidated my dirty laundry.
Way too much teen lesbian porn
Found my plaid pants and Beatle Boots.
Looked for my other shoes and failed to find them.
had a crappy meatball sub
spent several hours putting that van photo collage at the top of my blog
learned the memorial bridge is closed
missed the cheese festival
felt sorry for the jewelry artists at the Strawberry Banke market
Wrote a list of Van-related projects:

"Fuel Pump.
2ft fuel hose
pcv and grommet
flush radiator
alt. gauge?
door gaskets
return broken multimeter
oil filler cap
spark plugs
etc."

the list is as long as my arm and doesn't even include the major project of fixing the broken transmission. I have strong suspicions that the van only has two gears and that only happens when the transmission band breaks. The band can be replaced without removing the transmission but I need a flat piece of ground without cars racing by my crippled toes to do the work and I need all the materials laid out next to me and also some snacks and music or else this will never get done. And I need to have another vehicle standing by to drive me to the hardware store when I strip some essential screw. This is a big project but I know that once it is complete and the rims are painted and I've buffed out some rust then the van will be in the best shape ever. That's all that motivates me.

I found my tennis racquet and played a game or two today in the Columbus day sun with a buddy who worked at the crimp factory with me and has a lead on a good paying gig in Lawrence at a solar panel plant. IS that what I want? My bank account has the louder voice in this conversation. I don't have a place to live and my memory of sleeping in my van in Portsmouth last winter is not pleasant. I need a job and a room for my instruments and I want to play piano at the Clipper home every night. Van life doesn't allow for that and a van with two speeds and leaking fuel pump really doesn't allow for that.

"Time to Prioritize" was a motivational sign in a math class I had in High School.

My buddy from West Roxbury came up with his whiny dog and we had a hot dog at Gillies and managed not to get into a fight.

"The problem is that when we were twenty-four years old we thought time was cheap." I said with a nauseating arrogance. "I figured I was either immortal or would die before it mattered what I did. The possibility of growing as old and decrepit as my father never occurred to me."

"Time is cheap," he said and validated this by saying when he is with his 2'9'' son that nothing else matters.
I had no response because the closest I've been to having a kid was working as a kindergarten teacher.

We discussed the various approaches to child rearing that our parents had:
Me: Hopeless. No plan. Last people on earth who should've had kids.
Him: They had plans. They had dreams but life got in the way. Take some of the blame.
Me: Bullshit.

It was a mature conversation as the arrogance that dictated our youth was deadened by disease and experience.
"There are no shortcuts," we both said at one time or another and sounded shockingly like our idiot fathers.

I try to break down life to its basic level, a summation you could put on a motivational poster.

"You develop skills and apply them." 

"Maybe you start a business related to your skills and then develop new ones."

"Life is a series of trade-offs, pain management and compromise."

"Hopefully you can contain your psychopathic tendencies" 

"Trust one or two people and forgive the heartless insults slung in your direction."

I don't want to be flippant because that would immediately call for the revocation of my philosopher's license. As soon as life becomes routine then I'm in effect living off the interest of my memories and the false promises of the senile future. I couldn't do that if I tried.

"Successful people spend their youth preparing to be an adult," I say to my inner child. "Failures spend their adulthood acting like children."

"You get good at what you do and what you do is what will kill you," I say in mysterious response.
"You sound like a 10 year old boy," said a comrade in Mexico. "Can you at least grow up and be 11?"

I have some other trite saying that are my attempt to sum up my ambivalence. (I admit had to spell check that word)
I don't want all the answers; I only want enough answers so I can ask a different question.

"All these lawns should be small farms," I muttered as we overlooked the neighborhood. "It's insane to buy cucumbers."
"We'll get there," said Roxbury.
"But the problem is that we were already there, in 1820. And now we have this. We're going in the wrong direction."
He shrugged. "Oggy, don't worry. We'll get back there."

And lately I've been thinking of the old Gandhi line: Be the change you want to see in the world.
Because I think that's the only goal line there is in this ridiculous game.

School Lunch

The clock is ticking on my work release vacation. Either I find gainful employment in NH or the Ghost of Christmas past will haunt me until I flee to Labrador or Guatemala. I have some leads on a sloppy Joe on a wheat bun. I remember in 1977 shuffling up to the Little Harbor Lunch counter with my plastic milk token and fifty cents for a bologna sandwich and fries. Kids were different then. We survived on Fritos and Twinkies...because we had absolutely no digital gadgets to slow our metabolism and I was chased around the playground non-stop by several bullies thereby helping me work off the fattened milk and pizza and frosted flakes. I ran like I was training for a marathon. My yellow Local Union 1947 hat (I was always a socialist) was the gold ring of the playground. Kids would chase me for hours trying to get it but I was too quick. Then we would play "smear the queer" and it would be me against a dozen kids and then I'd fall and the hat would be the receptacle of piss and spit and tears and blood. And I'd put it back on in prideful resentment and march back to class where we would have vocabulary contests pertaining to the butterfly cocoon. I'm sure this brings back similar memories for everyone.

I do not remember eating Chicken Salad or anything called a "fajita" until at least 1988. Listen, on Thanksgiving we had Indian Corn and that was as international as it got in 1977. Hell, the food pyramid on our lunch room wall was 80% meat and milk and cheese and way up at the top was the peak where some clown had written in "Corn Chips". The class roster was like a list of immigrants who had died on the Titanic: Schwartz, Bleacher, Strangus, Eveland, Rodgers, Tobin, Webster, Allard, Gillingham, Tate, Bolko, Sullivan, McAullife. And we all ate bologna sandwiches, a bag of chips and a box of milk. If we were lucky and our parents were still married we might get an apple or one of those peanut butter wafer bars. But most of us were content with bubble gum. Then we'd be unleashed onto the asphalt kickball field or play Off The Wall or hide in the concrete water drainage tunnels.

Sorry I don't have anything more interesting to say today. It was easy to be entertaining when I was in Labrador. These days I'm more practical and boring. I walked a dog today and washed a car and cooked pasta. Sorry. At least I'm trying. I'm doing the best I can.

Top 10 Comments that Have Nothing to Do With Meaning of Life

1. I wake up every morning feeling like I was in a car accident in my dreams and my spine was injured.
2. If you have arthritis in your dreams does that mean you'll have it when you wake up? In my case: Yes.
3. I've invested in muscle building supplements called Creatine and Glutamine as the depletion of my body is like the federal reserves being plundered to bail out Greek Gyro cooks.
4. I wake up...wait, I already said that one.
5. My memory is so bad I have to check my blog to find out what I did yesterday. So, I lie to make it appear I accomplished more. This false sense of achievement is the basis of the global economy.
6. My brain thinks I'm 24 years old and my back thinks my brain belongs to someone else.
7. My cock has had his number retired.
8. I pawned my balls at the Hawk Shop for $11 but then bought $10 worth of losing scratch tickets. I spent the last dollar on viewing privileges for my balls.
9. I'm a snob with bad taste.
10. I think looking at motorcycles for sale is "doing something".