Tree City

Main Street Uvalde (misleading because it's actually a busy town)

See Me Now

Here's a mirror image I see every day and it doesn't take 20/20 vision to know what a hypocrite looks like. Conventional Wisdom leads to events like the holocaust. And in the years of trying to get involved with alternative energy I've resisted because despite what the hippies say the solar power comes at great cost and is most often used in military and oil related fields. You think the Humboldt pot growers use only solar power to grow their $100K harvest? You want to rely on Norcal sunshine to guarantee your payday? No, they use gas and diesel power generators....

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.