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.