The struggle contiues (and the stakes get higher)...

Forced transitions

As those of you who follow my Tweets and/or FB updates know, a new acquisition was welcomed into my world yesterday in the form of a new laptop. This followed a rather sudden and (briefly) traumatic morning of loss when my trusty iBook laptop decided to crap the bed after being moved over on my desk a few inches while running. The hard drive started making sad noises, followed closely by the pinwheel icon of death (familiar to MAC users), followed by repeated failed reboot attempts. After a brief period of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I realized that the time had come for the new acquisition. The biggest pain about it was going to be starting from scratch vis a vis web browser bookmarks, calendar entries, and music library contents. I viewed this as a major bummer, to coin a phrase dating back to the eighties, seventies, and even sixties.

Having previously committed time to Janet at KPFT for premium packing and mailing, I headed over to the station, where I could fulfill the commitment as well as get online and make an appointment at the Apple store to confirm the demise of the iBook and secure the replacement.

Halfway to the station (an amazingly straight shot down Studemont/Montrose over the course of a few miles) I was set straight in terms of the state of my world (which I thought had ben severely inconvenienced) by the sight of a fender bender involving an innocent motorist and the cab which had rear ended said traveller. I thought to myself "man, that cabbie's day has just begun to suck", not in a gloating way at all, merely in a way that put my seemingly earth shattering circumstances in perspective.

It helped quite a bit, and also brought to my attention the power that technology has managed to hold over us as a society in a very short time. I had a very palpable pit of the stomach feeling for the few hours between the time I new that the iBook was dead and I had the Macbook in hand and then at home and running. It was similar to the feeling that I have had on the few rare occasions that I have forgotten my mobile phone and been without it for more than an hour (OH MY GOD, WHAT IF SOMEONE (THE OFFICE) CALLS?!?!?!?)

Wasn't I swearing less that 10 years ago that I would never have a cell phone because of its essential function as an electronic leash?

I suppose that I'm still clinging to my fleeting memories of being able to roam away from home unable to be contacted in any way, yet realizing that the world is at a place where one is contacted via these mediums that you can have with you anywhere, and where one is expected to be contactable anywhere. It's actually kind of rude when you stop and think about it, but then again, maybe it is if you can remember a time when it wasn't the norm. I suppose this is the onset of what getting old and watching the world move on feels like (while still (begrudgingly) adapting). It also feels like it has a bit to do with things in my life passing on (Scooter, the compy of 6 yrs) in close succession, but that is probably something for another post, since this one has exceeded my attempt at brevity, which was inspired by Crystal, but has not panned out.

Microbursts from the Overactive Brain

Having received a concerned email concerning the lack of activity here over the past eighteen months or so, I felt compelled to inform anyone who still may be checking in with any semblance of frequency that the majority of snarks and commentary can be found at my Twitter page. Initially created as a single conduit to bounce status updates along the line to Facebook (morphing into the new empirical Goliath with questionable motives (or not so questionable - profit is very transparent and the noblest of causes, right?)) and MySpace (thrashing and woofing a Stegosaurus's demise in the tar pits of online obscurity and obsolescence since its acquisition by the Murdoch information empire), I find myself utilizing it as a forum for random thoughts and information dissemination similar to what was done here in the past, albeit in a much briefer form (this entry, for example, is already 723 letters too long and is a mere breath in comparison to some previous missives).

So, if you're still interested in my thoughts on anything and everything, the Twitter feed can be viewed here.

The occasional post will still be found here, preceded by an announcement of some kind on the feed.

Thanks & Peace,

Phil

Arthur was right

about many things, but chiefly about the daily struggle of people to survive in today's world being more than enough to keep them busy enough so as to preclude any definitive action in response to the inane, insane crap that our porportedly wise elected leaders are foisting upon us in the guise of policies geared towards the best interests of the common person.

A recent email from a surprising source:

It would appear that perhaps you have been lured to the dark side: a typical distracted American too wrapped up in the struggles of everyday life to be bothered with updating the postings on his blog. It's hard work, but it is important.

Yup! I checked your blog, only to find that the author has not checked it recently. I've been taking some classes, so depending how the work schedule falls, I can spend up to 87 hours a week in either work or class, with a maximum of six round-trip commutes which average 74 miles each. Say what you want about the money, I would rather have serenity and time to look at my feet.

In my copious amounts of free time, I have to ponder my country and the wise choices which have led our economy to circle the toilet. So, really, I have put all of my ponderances about the rest of the world on hold until the middle of May, but then there are all of the people who used to be my friends that I have not had time for either, so perhaps the international community is on hold until at least June.

Since leaving the Alley, the structure of a typical day for me, not to mention week or month has been radically redefined. Instead of trudging off to the same location every day to perform pretty much the same tasks over the course of weeks and months, my cell phone has become the key to gainful employment through the local office of IATSE, the stagehand's union here in the U.S. and Canada. Earlier last year I was working quite a bit with the Houston Symphony which gave me a little bit of structure, but that has gone by the wayside as the result of some jealousy, a blackball vote on my membership, and a decision to pass on the gig due to its glaring similarity to what I had just left at the Alley. I am doing most of the shows for the Society for the Performing Arts, but for the most part the bulk of my gainful employment is achieved by "working off of the roster" waiting for the phone to ring (or buzz in my case - old habits die hard). Most times the gigs are one or two day affairs, but one never knows when a call may turn into a little more. Case in point: the office called last Tuesday at 1 in the afternoon asking if I could be down at the Ballet for a load in. I was able to get down there to replace an electrician and figured it would be good for a few days of work. I transferred over to carpentry on the third day and am now on the show crew for the run. So what began as a potential two or three day gig has morphed into a three week stint. I've met a bunch of guys I hadn't worked with before, and gotten to work in another space in town.

It's a scary existence (especially in this day and age), but also an exciting invigorating one.

However, it affords me a lot less time to sit in tech, surf the net for news stories, get outraged, and write reflective blog posts full of long run on sentences. I'm still thinking on all of the events and personalities in our lovely world, just not purging as often as I'd like. I guess my priorities have changed a little since leaving the Alley. My posts and their frequency seemed to be an unintended result of being cooped up in a dark room for 12 hours a day over stretches of two weeks every two or three weeks between September and July for nine years. The time that I have now not spent working is filled with some of the things that I wrote about here: working at KPFT, albeit not in the capacity I initially anticipated, but I'm happy doing whatever it is they need me to to keep the place going - and playing bass with a band I joined in September, Fahl and Folk. And the time spent not working on those projects is spent dealing with life rearing its ugly head in the form of roof replacement (planned), furnace replacement (surprise!), and triangle trips on airplanes during the holiday to see the folks that otherwise would be relegated to phone calls every two or three weeks.

Lately my pondering has been turning in the direction of the lyrics to a classic from The Who ("Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...") when confronted with not necessarily reneged upon campaign pledges, but certainly re-conceived ones (declassification of White House emails, complete draw down of forces in Iraq) and also the concept of just when a faceless coldly calculating inhuman multi national corporation stops becoming a group of individuals that have the same base needs and wants and fears as the rest of us and becomes the entity (Sorry to disappoint you Arthur, but I still have to believe that we all have some things in common - like eating and sleeping and craving physical contact from another being). More on those and other conundrums later.

Meanwhile, check out Arthur's latest posts and help out if you can. Things over his way seem to have taken a dramatic turn the wrong way if we are to continue enjoying his eye opening unique commentary.

And above all, continue to ponder and talk and/or write about your thoughts and feelings on the state of your world with others. It's one of the only ways that things may improve eventually.

An Excursion

Well, the first title for this particular post was to be "Dan Piraro gets it", based on this comic from about a few weeks ago, but alas, the comic syndicate or some bout of paranoia on his part prevents me from lifting a copy of the strip and linking to it from my photobucket account. I hope you enjoy the satisfaction that I felt when I saw the strip printed in The Houston Chronicle, no less, the only daily newspaper that (dis)serves the fourth largest city in the country, which is also known in some circles as the "Petro Metro".

There has been rhetoric spewed forth by activists and campaigning politicians who are focussed on the war in Iraq and its origins which refers to the fact that the M1 tanks and Humvees cruising around that country should be flying an Exxon Mobil flag instead of Old Glory. While this is amusing and inflammatory, it lacks irony due to the outlandishness of it as a concept. While Facism is technically defined as a nation state which is essentially controlled by corporate/commercial interests and entities, those entities will never let it be blatantly known (i.e. with the display of a flag on war vehicles or vessels) that they have this influence and are actively asserting it. Instead, they will use the cover of the nation state's political and nationalistic identity to conceal that influence and the degree of the corporation's role in the running of the country.

What I do find darkly ironic is the fact that another of the huge multi-national oil corps that are deeply embroiled in the run up to and have a huge vested interest in the ultimate outcome of the situation in Iraq (I really can't think of any other way to put it - war isn't appropriate any more, and all the other buzzwords - insurgency, conflict, uprising, sectarian strife, are all too narrow in their scope for me, even though 'situation' does have a sterile quality to it) essentially took their logo and name from one of the oldest and most common of military insignias signifying rank: Chevron.

On to the excursion from which this post gets its name:

A couple months ago I was able to venture up to Anna Lee's farm for an annual festival that spans several days around the beginning of May essentially celebrating Spring (although it's usually pretty much Summer by then here in Southeast Texas). This particular visit I was able to catch up with an old friend from the Alley who has also since moved on and is working up in Little Rock at Arkansas Repertory Theater as the Prop Head, Linda and I reminisced about some of the haunts that we used to frequent down on Galveston Bay where she lived when she worked at UH Clear Lake before the Alley. We commiserated about places that have since closed and she recommended one that I hadn't known about.

I decided to drive down to the Bay area and visit some of the sites of haunts gone and hopefully some of the haunts themselves. First stop was the bar we went to the most, simply known as The Point, a nod toward the geographic feature that it was located on, Morgan's Point in Barbour's Cut. A few years ago a trip down there was organized that I didn't make it to, but it was just as well since I got a phone call that day with the sad news that it was gone. Since I was in the general area I decided to swing by and got verification for myself: The site of many a beer and sun soaked afternoon was no more than a cement slab and the small pier that stretched from the patio out into the bay (I guess it's really the ship channel that far up). Folks were still using the pier to fish for Reds, which I found slightly comforting. Next was a tiny little bar by a small boat launch on an inlet bayou a few miles inland, called Mike and Edna's Red Lantern, if memory serves me correctly. Another cement foundation greeted me behind a metal white rail fence along the two lane highway right before the bridge over the bayou. I had to turn around and drive by it again to confirm that it was the right location.

With a slightly heavy heart about the loss of these local watering holes, I headed South to try and find the bar that Linda had recommended, Sneakin' Out. She gave me a few landmark locations and roads that would hopefully lead me to said bar (with a great name), but they were curiously far apart. I followed Red Bluff Road over many twists and turns only to find housing development upon housing development. I then continued down highway 146 to Baycliff and followed one of the local streets to the Bay. No establishment with the name that Linda gave me, but a couple interesting looking places, one of which I couldn't pass up called Junior's Hideout. It was essentially a shack with a covered concrete tarmac out back for grilling and sitting. The bar was in two sections and there was a great cooler behind it - wood doors with glass windows so hazy you could barely tell what beers were behind them. Along with the unique decor was the group of local folks in the bar. There were two women who I can only guess were mother and daughters with three young girls in tow. The kids were hurling plastic darts at an electronic dartboard with mixed success. After a little while the women shepherded the girls outside to the patio area. I inquired of the few others in the bar about the existence and location of Sneakin' Out. One of them was able to give me some directions that would take me further down the road that the Red Lantern was on.

Before leaving, I was treated to some local rivalry and angst between this fellow and a woman who had just returned to town. She came into the bar with another guy and they sat down for a beer or two. The first guy sat at the bar for a few moments and then went out back, only to return less than a minute later. He went right up to her and started talking about how great it was to see her now that she had gotten back to town since she had never bothered to say goodbye or anything after he loaned her some money and his leather motorcycle jacket. The exchange got more and more heated until the girl and the guy she came in with got up and left followed by a continuing stream of invective from the first guy. He sat down and apologized to me in case he had offended me, to which my reply was 'no problem, it's your and her business.' Not long after I thanked hime for the info and headed back North.

Wending my way back up 146 toward Barbour's Cut but going inland on Red Bluff road to Genoa-Red Bluff I found no Sneakin' Out (possibly another casualty of times gone by), but did Find the Genoa Cove Social Club, another unique watering hole with a colorful cast of characters. The highlight of this encounter was the combination of the number of golfers in the population of the Sunday afternoon crowd and the proximity (right across the highway) of the local landfill mound to the bar. As the afternoon wore on, the trash talking about how high anyone could drive a ball up the hill that day got more and more animated. One of the crowd went off to get his clubs so that the challenge could be realized. After about 45 minutes (during which there were many jibes about how his wife (who was apparently cooking steaks for their dinner) wasn't going to let him out of her sight once he got home (especially not with his clubs in tow)) he appeared and the fun began. The climax of the proceedings came when one of the guys drove a ball across the road with out much lift. It hit the far side curb and began to bounce around on the roadway, eventually making its way in front of a car and getting hit by it. The driver slowed and then kept going, only to reappear go in the other direction and turning into the bar parking lot. He got out and asked in an animated way what the fuck the deal was, only to be met with quizzical looks and questions about no one knowing what he meant and earnest denials that anyone on the patio had been hitting golf balls across the highway (in spite of the bag of clubs in plain sight. The driver sized up the number in the crowd, decided it wasn't worth it and got back into the car and drove off, much to the amusement of everyone there (and, truth be told, I couldn't see any damage to his car when he hit the golf ball or when he drove up).

Soon after I said my goodbyes and made my way back to Houston, unsuccessful in my quest for the bar Linda had told me about but satisfied with the bars that I had found and the people that I had met.

Arthur has asked the question several times about why most people are not more aware of what's been happening to their basic rights and freedoms over the past eight years, and more subtly over the past several decades. Chris Floyd has pointed it out in numerous posts (I'm going to paraphrase him here):

The typical American is too wrapped up in the struggles of everyday life to be bothered with staying informed and forming critical opinions concerning the machinations and high crimes of this administration and of this country's government and ruling elite over the past several decades, perhaps even centuries. The ruling elite even goes so far as to manufacture conditions that contribute to and further distract people from what is actually going on. Spending money they don't have with credit they aren't eligible for and they can't afford to buy crap they don't need and don't really want even though they've been momentarily convinced they can't live without it even though in less than six months they'll have either a) broken it and thrown it away b) relegated it to the garage or the attic or c) given it to charity for dispersal to a disaster victim that will look at it and say 'what the heck am I supposed to do with this?!?

Worry about money not paid back or focus on spending more than one can afford on equipment to play an elitist game that wastes more land than any other in its sprawling courses across the world are only two of an infinitismal number of factors that keep our eye off of what should bear closer watching: the fact that there a re a very tiny amount of people in the world who control a hugely disproportionate amount of the world's resources and power and will do whatever they can to keep and expand that ownership and power, including letting people die in natural disaster and premptively going to war with country after country.

I don't blame the people who are distracted. I'm one of them and am easily distracted myself - witness the drastic downturn in posts here since my self inflicted employment realignment. It's hard work to stay informed and form opinions about these things, but it is important.

D'oh!!! (Or: The guile of the Dragon and the seething frustration of American and Western Multinational Oil Barons)

AP (via Raw Story):

Iraq and China are close to re-signing a $1.2 billion oil deal that was called off after the 2003 U.S. invasion, an Iraqi Oil Ministry official said Thursday.

Saddam Hussein's government signed a deal with the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. to develop the billion-barrel al-Ahdab oil field, despite U.N. sanctions that barred direct dealings with Iraq's oil industry.

Beijing was waiting for the sanctions to end when the U.S. invasion overthrew Saddam. The two countries restarted talks in October 2006.

"We are expecting that the next round of discussions, due to be held in April, will finish the negotiations," the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said it had no information about the talks.

Mmmmmm hmmmmmm.

Officials with CNPC and China's Commerce Ministry could not be reached for comment.

Really?

Meanwhile, in another part of town...

On Wednesday, another oil official said that Iraq's Cabinet has given the nod to the Oil Ministry to sign agreements with international oil companies to help increase the nation's crude output.

The two-year deals, known as technical support agreements, or TSAs, are designed to develop five producing fields that would add 500,000 barrels per day to the country's 2.4 million barrels per day output.


"But that's not enough! That sixth field in Wasit should have been ours as well!!!"

Sorry, chums.

In memoriam

Breaking cover and revealing my geek/gamer roots, but one must give the appropriate props to one of the masters...

Courtesy of Penny Arcade: