Added to her tab

Hey there! Good morning! Let me tell you what happened last night!

11pm, LV is asleep, she hasn't been feeling well. Had the pukes on Thursday at school, off and on nauseated and feverish since then, throat pain. Mr. V and I have finished our nightly whining about how all this sickness is dragging us down (we both had strep over the last two weeks, he never really got better and has some sort of gross tonsil abscess now) and we go out on the back porch on the way to bed to feed the CAT [it's sort of touching how this was a team activity, right?] [I definitely moved the fucking CAT with us, by the way]. We turn to go back inside and realize the door is locked. Of course, so is the front door. Most of the windows in this place are 10ft or more off the ground and are locked anyway.

So, to recap: 11 pm, sick kid locked inside, house dark, raining, Mr.V and I outside with CAT. I spend 10 minutes making the case that we should break the glass door in the back, Mr. V spends 15 minutes pretending he can figure out how to get in with a screwdriver, then pulls his blackberry out of his pocket (the only part of the story that involves improbable luck) and looks up 24 hr locksmiths. They tell us someone will be there in 15 and I continue wandering around the house pressing my ear to walls and windows to hear if LV is either screaming or choking to death on her own vomit. 45 minutes later, a 22 yr old kid rolls up in a BMW SUV, house music bumping. He gets out in a billowing cloud of cologne, apologizes for being stuck in traffic, mentions that he learned how to do this in the Israeli army, and, with his Ed Hardy underwear 2/3 of the way out of his stylish jeans and with his hair product glistening in the moon, he inserts some air bladders in the door jamb/way/whatever, inflates them and pops open the back door. I run in and verify that LV is breathing then immediately open a beer and sit on the floor, defeated. Mr.V pays him $75 and says, "Have fun tonight."

A careful reader of this story will recognize that it's all the CAT's fault.

The Crisis of Overproduction

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.
-Communist Manifesto






I dreamed I had a good job
And I got well paid
Blew it all at the penny arcade
-Riding with the King

Got my unemployment check today. First time I've been on unemployment since I was discharged from the USN.

That time, it helped me fund the transition from military to civil living; find an apartment, get a job, decode the bus schedule, generally adapt to living on the economy like a regular citizen. I was 28.

Now I'm 58 and it feels like a buy-out. I don't expect I'll have as good a job as I had before I went out on disability. I was being paid at the rate of a master electrician. I don't expect I'll ever make a wage that good again. I mean, except for the princely wage I earn here at BPhD.

I'll get other jobs, of course. In fact, I started a new job last week. Three days a week, I drive a shuttle for an outfit that rents recreational machinery to daytrippers; kayaks, canoes, bicycles, solar-powered picnic baskets, that sort of thing.

I transport renters and rented from the concession stand to the boat landing or river crossing or beach or wherever it is they're going. At the appointed interval, I pick them up and return them to the concession stand and, ideally, collect a fat tip.

It's an OK job. I get paid each day. In cash. Plus tips which are also in cash. In the Great Recession, cash is King.

It's the best job I've had lately.

A couple months ago I started working at the local hippie food co-op. I sweep up the store, stock the bulk food bins, and keep the panhandlers away from the loading dock.

It's interesting work, in a way, and my co-workers are very nice. It's not actually a paid job, though. Not in money, anyway. For my labor I receive a sack of dried legumes and whatever type granola is not selling. Last week it was Funky RainForest Crunch.

Strangely, Funky RainForest Crunch is not accepted as legal tender for debts public or private. It's harder than you might think to buy a round for the lads with stale granola.

Last month was the month of Parish Festivals and, on different weekends, I worked the beer tents for St Casimir's, Our Lady of Sorrows, St Bridget's, and St Stanislaus' Mission in the Valley.

Again, interesting work and my co-workers were super nice but the toilers in the vineyards were paid in beer tickets.

I saved them up and tried redeeming them down at the local. They wouldn't take them. Anti-Catholic bastards.

This month I came closest to striking gold. I'm working at a Blues festival.

During August, the local brewery sponsors a blues festival throughout the month. Each weekend, they erect stages and seating and dance floors and beer tents and brat grills in a park adjacent to the brewery. Bands fill the stages and rock the blues till your back ain't had a bone.

My excellent references and experience working the Parish festivals got me employment in one of the beer tents. Again, the pay was in beer tickets but I've got used to that. I was able to pour out a lot of free beers for my friends. That disposed of a whole lot of incurred obligations.

Plus, you know rhythm and blues. I danced for the first time since I had the procedure.

Oh, yeah. Had some big fun. Doesn't pay the bills, though.

Last weekend, a silent auction was included with the festival. I placed the winning bid on a weekend for two at a bed and breakfast on the harbor in Bayfield, Wisconsin. I'm hoping they take beer tickets.

Next month, I'll return to my little farm in East Needle range. It's been a long time since I've been home and I don't think I'm ever going to roam again. Since I left home in January of '09 it's been pretty much one god-damned thing after another. The urge to walkabout has left me, entirely.

More to the point, though, I'm going to see if I can support myself in the manner to which I have become accustomed strictly on ag income.

It might could work. Moya thinks it will. Even though the wage labor market has collapsed, the market for ag commodities thrives. Moya says we can make yards of money.

Beef, for example. Beef on the hoof is going for a dollar a pound. We've got 32 plump Shorthorns coming off the grass in October. Figure 1000 pounds each. Now that's a payday.

5x5 round bales of #2 Colorado Red Clover are going for $75 dollars a bale, in the field. Sold 70 bales in June, 130 in July, and, if the weather holds up the rest of the month, we'll sell another hundred by the end of August. September's cut we'll keep for ourselves.

Milk prices have never been better. We've settled the argument over whether to upgrade from a Class C to a Class A dairy. We'd have to take out a loan to do the upgrade and Moya agrees we don't want to take on a note in the middle of the Great Recession. Selling milk for cheese and yogurt and suchlike is worth a thousand a month in net proceeds.

We board some livestock, too. Outfitter's horses, mostly. Right now we're boarding a four-pony string at $250 per pony per month. They're contracted through September and week-to-week after that. For a thousand dollars a month, I can shovel a lot of shit.

I'll still have some deferred wages coming in. I'm eligible for a pension from my old employer. I've got checks coming from Veterans Affairs for PTSD and Agent Orange. Dept of Def considers me 25% disabled from the PTSD and compensates me accordingly.

Moya thinks that figure can be jerked upwards a few more points. She views my infirmity as an ore deposit to be mined for royalty checks.

There's a few other little sidelines that can turn a dollar. The band, for example. We mostly play for beer money, anyway. Or beer tickets. And, like I said earlier, there's the handsome stipend from BPhD.

So, for now, anyway, I'm leaving the world of regular jobs and regular wages. They can't fire me.
I quit.

By the Rivers of Babylon

The evacuation to Kuwait of the the 4th Brigade of the 2nd Division, USA, brings to an end the leading role of American military power in the unlawful occupation of Iraq. A praetorian detachment of 50,000 US troops will remain in Iraq for another year.

This is not the swift end to our Mesopotamian misadventure I expected when I voted for President Obama but, at least, the end is in sight. One more of the cowpies left behind by the dubya regime is on its way to being swept up and that will have to be enough for now.

Whether the Iraqi people will take advantage of our exit to establish a self-governing state remains to be seen. The Iraqi state is a colonial construct confected by the British from provinces they seized from the Ottomans in World War I. The separatist tendencies that have dogged its efforts toward national unity have only been strengthened by the aggressive war launched against Iraq by Bush. Integrated communities have been ethnically cleansed, communal divisions hardened, and the whole country, particularly the south, moved more closely into the orbit of Iran.

Everyone who opposed this aggression was right. Everyone who promoted it was wrong.

I want the occassion of the 4th Brigade's withdrawal to be marked by speeches and editorials and encomiums from those who were wrong apologizing to those who were right. I want to see video replay of the massive anti-invasion demonstrations that took place in 2002. I want the right wing's absurd theories of national security to be discredited for generations.

I want the destruction of more than 4300 American soldiers, sailors, and marines and the grief visited on their families to be hung around the necks of the GOP and their traveling warmongers for all time. I want American plutocrats taxed heavily to support their dependents and those thousands invalided by Bush's criminal adventure.

I want the armed forces of the United States returned to their proper role of Shield of the Republic, safeguarding the nation's lines of communication and defeating our enemies.

I want an end to this colonial buccaneering.

And I Ain't Namin' Names

For best country-western-male-female-singing-duo, I would name and nominate these two. I know, its a crowded field but I stand by John and Iris.

If I was to nominate the best-country-western-male-female-singing-duo that have never sung together, I would nominate him to sing with her.

Only You Know and I Know

Other than checking the baseball standings, the weather report, and cattle futures, I've pretty much given up on news reporting. TV news I watch not at all.

I don't even check the internet news sites I used to follow. It cuts into my already abbreviated porn downloading time.


I read the New York Times on line, of course, because they have Paul Krugman and foriegn bureaux and I always wanted to use the word, bureaux, in a sentence.


I read Hullaballoo and Media Matters for America. I read Informed Comment. When I get around to it. And that's about it.

The enormous amount of time saved and confusion avoided by not paying attention to the barking media has freed me up for a lot more loafing and fishing and drinking than ever before. For news of daily events, I rely mainly on the crowd at the Possum Eaters Inn. I may get the news late but it always comes with a cold one and an analysis simultaneously cruel and hilarious. Its a fair tradeoff.

So, although its news to me its probably not news to you that the goddamned California Proposition 8 has been overthrown by a U.S. court.

Praise the Lord! When will the right wing parasites understand they don't get to vote on other people's rights?

They claim to believe that human rights are endowed by the Creator. It would follow, then, wouldn't it, that these rights are no one's to give or to take but are inherent to our individual existence? The mot juste is, I believe, inalienable.

Plus, why should straight people be the only ones burdened with in-laws? Is that fair? Is that equitable? Is that just? I ask you.

I always have said and I always will say that the widest possible distribution of in-laws is the most crucial element to making the world a happier and a quieter place. Very wide.

Wider. Ever wider.

"This is a big inconvenience for me."

May be that nothing brings me out of blog hiding quite like the opportunity to shame a celebrity. Naomi Campbell, you might be the worst person alive this week.

Decent background on the whole thing here.

To sum up: Naomi Campbell, whom you might be familiar with as a supermodel who abuses staff, had dinner in the late 90's with Charles Taylor, whom you might be familiar with as a mass-murderer responsible for war crimes, mass rape, and crimes against humanity. Taylor, it seems, was smitten with Campbell and sent his men with "blood diamonds" to her room in the middle of the night. This event is confirmed by Campbell's assistant and her companions, to whom she desribed the encounter and the diamonds.

As it happens, this event is one of the few verifiable links between Taylor and the diamonds, a necessary link for the prosecution at the Hague. And yet Campbell has been unwilling to testify, going so far as to claim the whole thing never happened, until she was subpoenaed. [To be as generous as I can, I will note that her excuse was actually as follows: "This is someone that I read up on the Internet that's killed thousands of people, supposedly," she said. "And I don't want my family in any danger in any way."]

In her testimony this week, she noted that she was extremely "inconvenienced" by having to be there and went on to disavow any knowledge that the "dirty stones" she received were either diamonds or from Taylor (claims that is contradicted by both her assistant and Mia Farrow). She further claims that when she got wind of the possibility that they might be diamonds, she immediately gave them to Nelson Mandela's charity (a claim that Mandela has proven demonstrably false).

To recap: you are the person capable of providing the testimony that convicts Charles Taylor of war crimes and for years you refuse to appear, nominally out of safety concerns but, let's be serious, because of the bad PR associated with your having received a blood diamond. When you are forced to show up, you note your status as inconvenienced and you claim total ignorance of the origination of the stones as well as of their precious nature and further claim to have given the stones to Nelson Mandela when you really didn't? You both demur from giving decisive evidence against Charles Taylor *and* throw Nelson Mandela under the bus? Worst person alive.

(apologies for the silence. have moved. unpacking, prepping for new job, orienting, feeling mostly really happy.)

High Summer

I don't know if mass layoffs have struck BPhD or everyone's gone walkabout cause its high summer.

Probably the latter. I woulda heard about the former. Last hired, first fired. You know how they do.

Well, if they want to lay me off, they going to have to take it up with the Local. I got a contract. I got recall rights. And I get severance pay.

Its High Summer on the Flowage and a more fecund summer you will not find. Everything is ripening and reddening and gestating. The very air seems fertile as if vines could sprout from the clouds and the fog could bring forth honeyed fruit.
The crops look stupendous. Thick stands of rye and oats are marshalled across the county. Even a slight breeze casts them into motion, the grain rocking in slow rollers from fenceline to treeline.
Fields planted in corn and beans crowd the horizon. Field corn is already seven feet tall and the beans; Great Northern, Pinto, wax, and soy, are keeling over from the weight of their beany bounty.
Two crops of alfalfa have been put up already and the third crop is mowed, raked, and drying on the hillside. If the rain holds off for a few more days, it will be in the barn by the end of the week. There's plenty of time for a fourth crop. Nothing makes a country boy content like an overstuffed haymow.

The critters are thriving, too. I can't tell you how many sets of twin fawn Whitetail I've seen this season. I even saw triplets the day before yesterday browsing with their mama on an island in the Flowage. Its not unusual for two or three fawns to be born at one time but its unheard of they should survive this long into the summer. Tells you how rich is the browsing this year.

There's a merganser in the backyard on her third crop of offspring. She burrowed into the shoreline in the spring and has been here ever since raising babies and eluding Fox. She's had a couple close calls but Fox keeps falling for the broken wing ruse. He must see through it by now. I suspect he's so well fed he harasses the merganser strictly for amusement.

The boys are thriving like little idjits. I don't know if I told you but there's three boys spending the summer here. They range in age from eight to eight. It took me two weeks to learn how to tell them apart.

How they all ended up here is another post but suffice to say, one is the son of my stepdaughter, one is the cousin of the son of my stepdaughter, and one is the son of my niece, Moya. We call him Poco. You've heard me talk about him before.

Anyway, they're all here and carrying on like so many cocker spaniels. I admit to a moment of panic at the beginning of summer when they all parachuted in. I even tried giving them away to my blogging sisters. No joy there. They all had thin excuses.

Now, though, its working out pretty well. They go to a day camp four days a week and spend the other three days roaming the Flowage on their own.

I've got an old aluminum canoe they've commandeered to sail about in. Venturing out onto the broad waters on their own is forbidden but there are lots of sloughs and channels and shallow bays for them to reconnoiter. From time to time, they've even brought home nice fat perch for our supper.

I'm thriving, too. Its been six months since my surgery and I had my 5000 mile checkup last month. Three days of intensive poking and prodding and prying and sticking me with needles and examining my various fluid outputs have resulted in my being declared a cancer-free zone. I'm clean. I'm not sober but I'm clean for the first time in a year. My strength is just about back to form and my stamina is right where it should be.

I still have a little problem on my left side. After the operation, my remaining parts were reassembled into something of a loose confederation. Due to some mashed nerve bundles, my left or southern flank did not immediately join in the new regime with enthusiasm. The next six months were taken up with restoring central control over all constituencies of the taddyporter body politic.

Restoration is nearly complete but it turns out laying on my left side for the nine hours of the procedure tore the rotator cuff in my left shoulder. Surgery is the only way to fix it but, you know, its enough already with the surgery.

I'm just going to put it off for awhile. The shoulder can't get any worse. Who knows? It might get better on its own.

It could happen. Its High Summer.