I have now lived in Charlotte for four months. Here is why I like it better than Houston.
A typical week in Houston.
Mon - hang out at home
Tue - hang out at home
Wed - hang out at home
Thu - go to local bar and hang out with 1-3 senior citizens
Fri - hang out at home
Sat - hang out athome
Sun - lunch and beer at a bar
Total number of people other than my wife or I am paying for something, on average, two
A typical week in Charlotte
Mon - hang out at home
Tue - band practice
Wed - hang out at home
Thu - dinner out
Fri - invited out to watch a band
Sat - meet a huge array of people, some of them I know
Sun - take TFOE to The Dog Bar, he and I meet people, some of them people I know.
Total number of people other than my wife or I am paying for something, on average, twenty?
All of this within a ten minute walk from my house. I haven't driven to an event in at least three weeks.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Half Of Us Are Morally Repugnant.
I have been told to start writing these again, so here we go.
In the last couple of weeks there have been a couple of unpleasant things in the news, death and torture.
There has been the story of two black men killed by the police with the judicial system not even bringing them to a trial to determine if they had done anything wrong. With a video of one of the men being killed while pleading for his life this is outrageous, or it should be.
The other story is the release of a report on the torture of "detainees" by parts of the USA military/industrial complex. I say military/industrial because some of the "interrogators" were actually private contractors. The findings of the report were that the USA tortured people in sites around the world with an array of techniques from rape to mock executions to simply inflicting pain.
There will be no official, legal consequences of these abhorrent actions. Why? Because the government is responsible and these actions have been taken by organizations that are supposed to be for our safety. The idea is that for our own safety sometimes extreme actions are required, and nasty things happen.
While these actions are deplorable my interest is more in the reaction of the general public. While there are certainly many, many people who are appalled by these events not even remotely close to everyone is. I find this shocking. I'm not shocked that government institutions will do evil things, the record is too extensive and clear. I am shocked that on the most basic of moral questions, whether it is OK or not to kill and torture prisoners, huge quantities of Americans fail to get the right answer.
This disgusting truth is made even worse by the numbers. A quarter of Americans are satisfied or pleased that not one of the policeman who strangled an unarmed man to death has been charged with a crime. Only one quarter of Americans believe torture is never justified.
Talk to a few people who hold these beliefs and the reasons become sadly too easy to understand. The police and the military are respected organizations with authority. These organizations are there to keep us safe. There is widespread fear of a group of people, and importantly these people are "not us" and this fear justifies, as far as I can tell, anything.
A policeman said that his job was to "go home at night," that he had to treat "everyone as a threat" and that if you "don't comply you take your chances." Because the police are scared if you don't do whatever they say when they say it then anything they do, up to and including killing you, is justified. Of course this fear is directed towards the "other", and this "other" is black men, those aged between 15-19 are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by the police than white men of the same age.
At least judicially this default position, and justification, is accepted. Police killed 2,718 people between 2004-2011 and only 41 policemen were even charged, 1.5%. As a point of reference UK police killed nine people during the same period. In the USA if the police kill you it was your fault. In the UK they don't kill you.
The "other" with torture are called terrorists. It doesn't matter that they have not been charged, or convicted, or sentenced in a court to determine whether they are actually terrorists It doesn't matter that if they did the same to us we would be horrified. The US authority has picked them up and they are foreign and Muslim, so anything is acceptable because those people are scary.
I learned this week that half of the people around me are morally repugnant because they are cowards.
In the last couple of weeks there have been a couple of unpleasant things in the news, death and torture.
There has been the story of two black men killed by the police with the judicial system not even bringing them to a trial to determine if they had done anything wrong. With a video of one of the men being killed while pleading for his life this is outrageous, or it should be.
The other story is the release of a report on the torture of "detainees" by parts of the USA military/industrial complex. I say military/industrial because some of the "interrogators" were actually private contractors. The findings of the report were that the USA tortured people in sites around the world with an array of techniques from rape to mock executions to simply inflicting pain.
There will be no official, legal consequences of these abhorrent actions. Why? Because the government is responsible and these actions have been taken by organizations that are supposed to be for our safety. The idea is that for our own safety sometimes extreme actions are required, and nasty things happen.
While these actions are deplorable my interest is more in the reaction of the general public. While there are certainly many, many people who are appalled by these events not even remotely close to everyone is. I find this shocking. I'm not shocked that government institutions will do evil things, the record is too extensive and clear. I am shocked that on the most basic of moral questions, whether it is OK or not to kill and torture prisoners, huge quantities of Americans fail to get the right answer.
This disgusting truth is made even worse by the numbers. A quarter of Americans are satisfied or pleased that not one of the policeman who strangled an unarmed man to death has been charged with a crime. Only one quarter of Americans believe torture is never justified.
Talk to a few people who hold these beliefs and the reasons become sadly too easy to understand. The police and the military are respected organizations with authority. These organizations are there to keep us safe. There is widespread fear of a group of people, and importantly these people are "not us" and this fear justifies, as far as I can tell, anything.
A policeman said that his job was to "go home at night," that he had to treat "everyone as a threat" and that if you "don't comply you take your chances." Because the police are scared if you don't do whatever they say when they say it then anything they do, up to and including killing you, is justified. Of course this fear is directed towards the "other", and this "other" is black men, those aged between 15-19 are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by the police than white men of the same age.
At least judicially this default position, and justification, is accepted. Police killed 2,718 people between 2004-2011 and only 41 policemen were even charged, 1.5%. As a point of reference UK police killed nine people during the same period. In the USA if the police kill you it was your fault. In the UK they don't kill you.
The "other" with torture are called terrorists. It doesn't matter that they have not been charged, or convicted, or sentenced in a court to determine whether they are actually terrorists It doesn't matter that if they did the same to us we would be horrified. The US authority has picked them up and they are foreign and Muslim, so anything is acceptable because those people are scary.
I learned this week that half of the people around me are morally repugnant because they are cowards.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Feeling Unreal
This week has been characterized by a pervasive feeling of unreality, a feeling such that the idea that there is an I experiencing a world is false. This is to such an extent that my writing, "I" is weird, that a more accurate description would be "something." That "something" has essentially all the characteristics of the "I" but without the identification. There is something that is having these ideas and writing them down, and there is an awareness, a consciousness, of these ideas and the act of writing them down, but there is nothing much more than those actions and awareness.
This isn't a complete state, I have a pretty clear intellectual concept of "I" and an emotional state that is best described as, "pleasantly dreamy." I have a concept of an entity continuing on into the future, and am capable of imagining that future, and even am making plans for that imagined future.
In trying to describe a state of mind there is always the difficulty of trying to translate from mind-to-different mind. Each of us experiences the world through a different filter, using different tools to evaluate and arrange our experiences. The best we can do is try to connect common experiences that fit our state as closely as possible and hope that there is a commonality in sensation felt in such an experience.
I felt very much like this a lot of the time as a teenager, particularly at school. A little tired, a little bored, an empty mind in a relaxed body without real needs. Imagine sitting in a conference room in a hotel during the third hour of an all-day training on a subject with which you are pretty familiar. You aren't really required to do much apart from be there. Lassitude ensues. For me, things start to look brighter, as if filled with light. Time somehow disappears.
East and West have different viewpoints on this phenomenon. I am reminded very much of a bit by Alan Watts in which in the West if someone says, "I have realized that I am God" that they lock you up for being insane, while in the East they say, "Congratulations!"
In the West this sensation of unreality is called derealization, and in my case more depersonalization, "It consists of a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation.[1] Subjects feel they have changed, and the world has become vague, dreamlike, less real, or lacking in significance" It is described as psychotic, related to stress/trauma, and is part or parcel of a number of psychiatric disorders.
In the East it is described as a realization of the illusion of the ego, and is one of the great goals of spiritual development. In Buddhism it is called Anatta, the perception of "not-self" and is vital to true understanding. The perception that true reality is there is an I for which we must work, and toil, and protect, and desire, and need is in this view the root of suffering. The realization that this perception is a creation of the mind rather than a fundamental reality is something that practitioners of Eastern spiritual disciplines actively try to acquire.
Psychosis/spiritual realization.
Something is feeling quite pleasant in a way that would disturb lots of people.
This isn't a complete state, I have a pretty clear intellectual concept of "I" and an emotional state that is best described as, "pleasantly dreamy." I have a concept of an entity continuing on into the future, and am capable of imagining that future, and even am making plans for that imagined future.
In trying to describe a state of mind there is always the difficulty of trying to translate from mind-to-different mind. Each of us experiences the world through a different filter, using different tools to evaluate and arrange our experiences. The best we can do is try to connect common experiences that fit our state as closely as possible and hope that there is a commonality in sensation felt in such an experience.
I felt very much like this a lot of the time as a teenager, particularly at school. A little tired, a little bored, an empty mind in a relaxed body without real needs. Imagine sitting in a conference room in a hotel during the third hour of an all-day training on a subject with which you are pretty familiar. You aren't really required to do much apart from be there. Lassitude ensues. For me, things start to look brighter, as if filled with light. Time somehow disappears.
East and West have different viewpoints on this phenomenon. I am reminded very much of a bit by Alan Watts in which in the West if someone says, "I have realized that I am God" that they lock you up for being insane, while in the East they say, "Congratulations!"
In the West this sensation of unreality is called derealization, and in my case more depersonalization, "It consists of a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation.[1] Subjects feel they have changed, and the world has become vague, dreamlike, less real, or lacking in significance" It is described as psychotic, related to stress/trauma, and is part or parcel of a number of psychiatric disorders.
In the East it is described as a realization of the illusion of the ego, and is one of the great goals of spiritual development. In Buddhism it is called Anatta, the perception of "not-self" and is vital to true understanding. The perception that true reality is there is an I for which we must work, and toil, and protect, and desire, and need is in this view the root of suffering. The realization that this perception is a creation of the mind rather than a fundamental reality is something that practitioners of Eastern spiritual disciplines actively try to acquire.
Psychosis/spiritual realization.
Something is feeling quite pleasant in a way that would disturb lots of people.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Hey Look At Me!
It's impolite to impress ones needed mental state on others. Therefore this post.
I don't feel that bad, really. I'm more concerned about my wife than I am about myself.
However, I have lost interest in eating food.
I don't really want to do anything.
It took me three minutes to write this line.
I am finding that drinking and smoking pot are mostly what makes me enjoy my situation, and so I do that regularly.
My "sister" (hah! Hugs 'n shit) called me up because she was worried, like an angel, and I was fascinating and helpful.
These are not good signs. That's a list of classic symptoms. But I really don't feel that bad.
a mystery.
The conclusion?
Practice.
One hour later I'm eating a delicious burrito. So ignore all of that.
I don't feel that bad, really. I'm more concerned about my wife than I am about myself.
However, I have lost interest in eating food.
I don't really want to do anything.
It took me three minutes to write this line.
I am finding that drinking and smoking pot are mostly what makes me enjoy my situation, and so I do that regularly.
My "sister" (hah! Hugs 'n shit) called me up because she was worried, like an angel, and I was fascinating and helpful.
These are not good signs. That's a list of classic symptoms. But I really don't feel that bad.
a mystery.
The conclusion?
Practice.
One hour later I'm eating a delicious burrito. So ignore all of that.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Kicking Chihuahuas
I would like to start off this post with the important fact that even while I have had the opportunity and motive to kick a chihuahua, I have not done so. I do not intend to kick a chihuahua in the future.
Today I imagined kicking a chihuahua. I don't mean that I just had a thought of kicking a chihuahua, I really imagined it. I felt the curve of my foot, keeping the arch stiff, so that your laces drive through the chihuahua, rather than having the energy dissipated through a dampened foot.
I imagined making sure I kept my head down, and over the chihuahua, with a good extension and hip rotation balanced by my left arm's extension and rotation.
I imagined the crunching, flopping failure of the structural integrity of the chihuahua.
The chihuahua is a sort of fawn colour, nice and shiny.
Chihuahuas have no good quality.
They are evil doers.
Today I imagined kicking a chihuahua. I don't mean that I just had a thought of kicking a chihuahua, I really imagined it. I felt the curve of my foot, keeping the arch stiff, so that your laces drive through the chihuahua, rather than having the energy dissipated through a dampened foot.
I imagined making sure I kept my head down, and over the chihuahua, with a good extension and hip rotation balanced by my left arm's extension and rotation.
I imagined the crunching, flopping failure of the structural integrity of the chihuahua.
The chihuahua is a sort of fawn colour, nice and shiny.
Chihuahuas have no good quality.
They are evil doers.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
mY OFFICIAL pOSITION oN rAPE.
rAPE IS WRONG.
dON'T DO IT
iF YOU SEE PEOPLE DOING IT STOP THEM
iF PEOPLE SAY IT IS ok TELL THEM THEY ARE WRONG
bE CLEAR WHEN YOU DON'T WANT SOMETHING
bELIEVE THEM
cARE FOR THEM
dO BAD THINGS TO THOSE BASTARDS
rEMEMBER THAT THE ONLY WAY TO STOP RAPE IS TO CONVINCE PEOPLE NOT TO DO IT
dON'T PISS OFF YOUR ALLIES
dON'T DO IT
iF YOU SEE PEOPLE DOING IT STOP THEM
iF PEOPLE SAY IT IS ok TELL THEM THEY ARE WRONG
bE CLEAR WHEN YOU DON'T WANT SOMETHING
bELIEVE THEM
cARE FOR THEM
dO BAD THINGS TO THOSE BASTARDS
rEMEMBER THAT THE ONLY WAY TO STOP RAPE IS TO CONVINCE PEOPLE NOT TO DO IT
dON'T PISS OFF YOUR ALLIES
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Morality, Israel and Gaza
This post is prompted by three things, the present news of the war in the Gaza Strip, my wife's passionate interest in the area, and a podcast on the subject by Sam Harris. While horrific in reality the situation also has a macabre fascination in terms of morality. Questions of right and wrong, who is more right or wrong, intention versus effects, the present versus the future, the basic nature of man.
I want to start off by saying pretty much everyone involved is insane. A plan to systematically kill groups of other people is insanity. If one person does it it they are a psychotic serial killer. I don't think getting more people involved should stop that being true.
The best justification you can have for such events is self-defense, that if someone is trying to kill you you can kill them first. However, the problem here is in at what point does self-defense become feasible? In some southern US states that can happen if you feel threatened. The US government pre-emptively assassinates people with robots who associate with people who are parts of organizations who have killed people. This is justified legally as an "imminent threat to the USA." Something over 200 people are murdered in the city in which I live, Houston, each year. That's 0.01 percent of the population, one in every 10,000. That's ten times higher than the proportion of Americans killed in the 9/11/2001 attacks, would it then be legitimate self-defense for me to defend myself by killing as many of the Houstonians I feel might threaten me?
Self-defense as a moral argument only works when there is certainty. Someone must be attacking you before you can legitimately defend yourself. This is because if it simply requires you believing that they have the capacity to attack you, then clearly you have the capacity of attacking them, and therefore they can legitimately attack you. There are a lot of people who don't get that, and a lot of the world's wars have been fought by two sides acting in "self-defense." If having the capability and willingness under certain circumstances to fight and kill your people is a legitimate reason for attacking them in "self-defense" then every country in the world has a legitimate reason for attacking any other country with a military, as in almost every country.
Here's what I think about self-defense, and it's not weird because it's a common legal concept. I believe in minimum necessary force. If you can run away, you should. If you can disarm the person you should. If you can incapacitate someone you should. You should only kill someone if they are killing you, or something equally horrendous. This is a more aggressive moral stance than that of the founders of two of the larger religions in the world, Christianity and Buddhism.
So, the only way that the people in Israel and Palestine are not criminally insane in my book is if they are killing people who are in the act of trying to kill them, in the very act. At the moment Hamas is trying to kill any Israelis they can hit with rockets. The Israelis claim to be trying to stop this, acting in self-defense, by trying to kill those shooting the rockets.
Sam Harris' position in his podcast is that the side with the moral high ground is the one whose intention is the less evil. He says that Hamas has a political document that proposes the genocidal killing of all Jews on the planet. This is as evil as you can get. He says that Israel would live in peace with its neighbors if they would do the same. He says that you can tell that Israel's intentions are less evil because they basically have the ability to commit genocide with regard to the Palestinians but have not done so. Therefore, in terms of moral intentions, the Israeli's are more moral. Should you accept these proposals as true (and as enormously broad generalizations I do) then I agree with his point. Yay! Israel more moral!
But wait. Israel, in its actions of self defense has killed somewhere between 25 and 70 times as many Palestinians as Palestinians have killed Israelis depending at what point in the war you are counting. If you care about the separation between combatants and civilians (I waffle on this one) then (at last count) 5% of Israeli deaths were civilians, and at least 25% of those in Gaza.
So, the moral high ground of Israel was based on their intentions to stop their people being killed by selectively killing those attacking them, while Hamas was indiscriminately trying to kill any Israeli they could. The facts of reality are that Israelis are killing more people, and more indiscriminately, than Hamas. The results of the Israeli morality are worse than the results of the Hamas morality. I think what happens is more important than what people want to happen. I think not wanting to hurt anybody but spraying machine gun fire around for fun is worse than deliberately punching someone in the face.
I go back to the idea of minimum necessary force. Since the start of the Hamas rocket fire barrage six weeks ago two Israeli civilians have been killed. If you kept that rate up constantly, year by year, you would have less than twenty deaths a year. This is slightly less than the average number of accidental gun deaths a year over the last decade. Israelis kill themselves accidentally with weapons at the same rate as Hamas was managing to kill them with their rockets. If you go by terms of population, my chances of being murdered in Houston is 40 times higher than the chance of an Israeli civilian being killed by Hamas rockets, if they get to fire year round. Essentially Hamas rocket fire is a statistically irrelevant factor in the safety of Israel. The minimum necessary force against such attacks should be proportionately less than for ladders.
If you look at the history of the conflict in Israel after the British left (what a monumental cock-up that was) there was no "they started it." Both sides started trying to kill each from the get-go. Essentially the Jews were just better at it than the Muslims, and have been ever since. I believe that having greater capability means that you have greater responsibility. It matters whether you have a tennis ball or a hand grenade when throwing things at each other. The danger of your actions, the misery it causes, how much damage you do matters. Israelis have the capacity to decide on a moral basis how many Palestinians they wish to kill as a response to something less dangerous than me walking around my city, ranging from zero to all of them.
At a minimum it seems to me that if you kill more people than are killed on your side then you value the lives of your people more than you value the lives of people on the other side. This is completely, utterly standard for humanity. It is also basically a definition of bigotry. If you look at the facts of the situation it seems as though Israel values an Israeli at about 50 people from Gaza. How appalling. What might be worse is that Hamas are still fighting, and apparently value the lives of their own people at a lower rate.
It seems undeniable to me that the group with the greatest control over how much harm is done are the ones doing the most indiscriminate harm. The other side has worse intentions, which ain't easy, but don't have the capability to do as much harm, and strangely value their own citizens' lives less than anyone else. Then there are the ones who don't want sides, and they are getting killed anyway.
So, in the great moral question of the Israel and Gaza situation the answer is that both sides are bigoted, violent, insane bastards.
I want to start off by saying pretty much everyone involved is insane. A plan to systematically kill groups of other people is insanity. If one person does it it they are a psychotic serial killer. I don't think getting more people involved should stop that being true.
The best justification you can have for such events is self-defense, that if someone is trying to kill you you can kill them first. However, the problem here is in at what point does self-defense become feasible? In some southern US states that can happen if you feel threatened. The US government pre-emptively assassinates people with robots who associate with people who are parts of organizations who have killed people. This is justified legally as an "imminent threat to the USA." Something over 200 people are murdered in the city in which I live, Houston, each year. That's 0.01 percent of the population, one in every 10,000. That's ten times higher than the proportion of Americans killed in the 9/11/2001 attacks, would it then be legitimate self-defense for me to defend myself by killing as many of the Houstonians I feel might threaten me?
Self-defense as a moral argument only works when there is certainty. Someone must be attacking you before you can legitimately defend yourself. This is because if it simply requires you believing that they have the capacity to attack you, then clearly you have the capacity of attacking them, and therefore they can legitimately attack you. There are a lot of people who don't get that, and a lot of the world's wars have been fought by two sides acting in "self-defense." If having the capability and willingness under certain circumstances to fight and kill your people is a legitimate reason for attacking them in "self-defense" then every country in the world has a legitimate reason for attacking any other country with a military, as in almost every country.
Here's what I think about self-defense, and it's not weird because it's a common legal concept. I believe in minimum necessary force. If you can run away, you should. If you can disarm the person you should. If you can incapacitate someone you should. You should only kill someone if they are killing you, or something equally horrendous. This is a more aggressive moral stance than that of the founders of two of the larger religions in the world, Christianity and Buddhism.
So, the only way that the people in Israel and Palestine are not criminally insane in my book is if they are killing people who are in the act of trying to kill them, in the very act. At the moment Hamas is trying to kill any Israelis they can hit with rockets. The Israelis claim to be trying to stop this, acting in self-defense, by trying to kill those shooting the rockets.
Sam Harris' position in his podcast is that the side with the moral high ground is the one whose intention is the less evil. He says that Hamas has a political document that proposes the genocidal killing of all Jews on the planet. This is as evil as you can get. He says that Israel would live in peace with its neighbors if they would do the same. He says that you can tell that Israel's intentions are less evil because they basically have the ability to commit genocide with regard to the Palestinians but have not done so. Therefore, in terms of moral intentions, the Israeli's are more moral. Should you accept these proposals as true (and as enormously broad generalizations I do) then I agree with his point. Yay! Israel more moral!
But wait. Israel, in its actions of self defense has killed somewhere between 25 and 70 times as many Palestinians as Palestinians have killed Israelis depending at what point in the war you are counting. If you care about the separation between combatants and civilians (I waffle on this one) then (at last count) 5% of Israeli deaths were civilians, and at least 25% of those in Gaza.
So, the moral high ground of Israel was based on their intentions to stop their people being killed by selectively killing those attacking them, while Hamas was indiscriminately trying to kill any Israeli they could. The facts of reality are that Israelis are killing more people, and more indiscriminately, than Hamas. The results of the Israeli morality are worse than the results of the Hamas morality. I think what happens is more important than what people want to happen. I think not wanting to hurt anybody but spraying machine gun fire around for fun is worse than deliberately punching someone in the face.
I go back to the idea of minimum necessary force. Since the start of the Hamas rocket fire barrage six weeks ago two Israeli civilians have been killed. If you kept that rate up constantly, year by year, you would have less than twenty deaths a year. This is slightly less than the average number of accidental gun deaths a year over the last decade. Israelis kill themselves accidentally with weapons at the same rate as Hamas was managing to kill them with their rockets. If you go by terms of population, my chances of being murdered in Houston is 40 times higher than the chance of an Israeli civilian being killed by Hamas rockets, if they get to fire year round. Essentially Hamas rocket fire is a statistically irrelevant factor in the safety of Israel. The minimum necessary force against such attacks should be proportionately less than for ladders.
If you look at the history of the conflict in Israel after the British left (what a monumental cock-up that was) there was no "they started it." Both sides started trying to kill each from the get-go. Essentially the Jews were just better at it than the Muslims, and have been ever since. I believe that having greater capability means that you have greater responsibility. It matters whether you have a tennis ball or a hand grenade when throwing things at each other. The danger of your actions, the misery it causes, how much damage you do matters. Israelis have the capacity to decide on a moral basis how many Palestinians they wish to kill as a response to something less dangerous than me walking around my city, ranging from zero to all of them.
At a minimum it seems to me that if you kill more people than are killed on your side then you value the lives of your people more than you value the lives of people on the other side. This is completely, utterly standard for humanity. It is also basically a definition of bigotry. If you look at the facts of the situation it seems as though Israel values an Israeli at about 50 people from Gaza. How appalling. What might be worse is that Hamas are still fighting, and apparently value the lives of their own people at a lower rate.
It seems undeniable to me that the group with the greatest control over how much harm is done are the ones doing the most indiscriminate harm. The other side has worse intentions, which ain't easy, but don't have the capability to do as much harm, and strangely value their own citizens' lives less than anyone else. Then there are the ones who don't want sides, and they are getting killed anyway.
So, in the great moral question of the Israel and Gaza situation the answer is that both sides are bigoted, violent, insane bastards.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Chapter 15
Scene one. A hallway. Willis, an unremarkable young man, enters from stage left, peering anxiously over his shoulder. He hears women's voices from off stage left. With a look of panic he scampers to exit stage right.
Enter five women, Jo, Leslie, Emily, Abigail, and Kathy, drunk, passing a bottle half full of a virulently pink liquid.
Kathy "Where's he got to then?"
Leslie "I don't know, do I? I just saw some lad sneak off through that door we just come through."
Kathy "Well, he ain't here, is he?"
Kathy and Leslie look around, Abigail dry heaves, Jo and Emily wrestle over the bottle.
Leslie "Nope, he ain't."
Abigail "Wooooo!!! Yeah!! Come and get it boys!"
Emily "Come on Jozzers, give me some of that you tight slag."
Jo "Piss off and get your own. Yer always splongin'"
Emily "Splongin! Yers wasted."
Jo "Bugger you all, I'm off to the pub." Jo exits stage right
Abigail "Pub! Yeah! Wooooooo!"
Leslie "Right, the pub. He's bound to be in the pub."
Kathy "Why's that then Lezzers?"
Leslie "'Cos he's a man right, stands to reason."
Kathy "Oh, right. Where's the bloody pub then?"
Emily "Wasn't there one around here? The Wangled Podger or something."
Abigail "Wooo! Addled Prophet!"
Kathy "So where is it?"
Emily "Jozzers went that way, she's a bloody bloodhound for pubs."
Kathy "Right. OK. Let's find Jozzers, that blokes not getting away, he had the hots for me and I ain't waiting another week. I'm dry as a desert.
Abigail falls. Exeunt all stage right, Abigail crawling.
Scene two. The Addled Prophet. Painted white with garlands of flowers hanging from the walls. A small dais center stage. HFWOBC is seated on a cushion on the dais. Around him are Ughrit, Landlord, and various bandits/patrons sitting on the floor.
HFWOBC "...so it seems to me that it would be easier if we just shared a bit more of our stuff with people who need it. I have found that people are very helpful if you....."
Enter Jo.
Jo "Oy! Is this the pub? Oy! I said, 'is this the pub?'"
Landlord "Yes madam, this is the Addled Prophet. If you will just take a seat I will be with you directly."
Jo "Gis us a pint of something, with an elephant. No, an unbrella. Umbrella."
Landlord "Yes madam, in just a moment. I just need to hear a bit more and then I will be right with you.
HFWOBC "Ah yes, where was I? Oh right. In my experience people are quite willing to help out when you just ask nicely."
Ughrit "The thing is Master, that most people are utter bastards around the rest of us, it's just different around you. I was what you might call a professional bastard, a right evil bugger, but then I.."
Jo "Are you sure this is a pub? Looks like a temple or something."
HFWOBC "You keep saying that Ughrit but there's nothing special about.."
Jo "Oy! I asked you a question. And where's my drink? You lot are bleedin' chovvernisticalls."
Landlord "Sorry chaps, I'll be right back. What will it be madam?"
Jo "Toldja, pint of umbrella."
Landlord "Certainly madam. Coming right up."
HFWOBC "What were you saying again Ughrit?
Ughrit "I was saying? Oh, yes. I was saying that it's different around you, people just are nicer."
HFWOBC "Well, Ughrit, I don't see how there's anything about me that's special, perhaps if we are all just a bit nicer than everyone will be..."
Enter Emily, Kathy, Leslie, and Abigail, loudly.
Emily "Here it is. Wait, is this a pub?"
Jo "Yeah, is Apple Moffit."
Landlord "Welcome to The Addled Prophet ladies. Can I help you?"
Abigail "Oooooooo. He's a big one."
Leslie "Jozzers, what are you drinking?"
Jo "Elephant. Pint."
Leslie "Good on ya. We'll have six then guvnor."
HFWOBC "So what we need to do is just trust each other a little more and then it seems to me that.."
Kathy "Who's the foreign fella?"
Landlord 'Well, he's.."
Kathy "Is he a mime? I love mimes. I think. Hey Lezzers, do I like mimes?"
Leslie "No, you bleedin' hate them."
Kathy "That's a shame then. He seems a bit cuddly to me. Like a pony."
Abigail "Wooooo! Foreign meat!"
Jo "Spicy."
Emily "So what's going on with the decor then?"
Landlord "Well, you know how it is. We just kind of felt that it needed a change, something a little more serene, a bit more uplifting than a pub."
Emily "Our Kaff's lookin' for something a bit more uplifting too."
Jo "Yeah, like them skirts. Although it don't take much."
Kathy "You cow! Anyway, that reminds me, is he in here?"
Kathy, Leslie, and Jo look around the pub. Abigail falls down and crawls towards the dais.
Emily "Uplifting eh? Seems a bit religious to me. Like this elephant is a bit naughty. I never did like the temple, I always needed a wee."
Jo "Kaffs, there he is, in the corner."
Kathy "Lovely one Jozzers. Ooh look at him in the corner pretending not to see me. I like the shy ones."
Leslie "And the loud ones."
Emily "And the tall ones."
Abigail "Foreign meat!"
Kathy "Cooey, I see you there loverboy. No need to act all shy."
Willis "Madam, I have told you before, I am engaged to be married."
Kathy "That don't bother me my darling. It'll be like I'm breaking you in for her. If you think about it she should be thanking me. All the rest of her life with someone who can't find the bucket in the dark. That's a tragedy, that is.
Willis "Madam, please!"
Kathy "Well, since you asked so nicely I'm willing to play along. A madam eh? I don't think I've done that one yet."
Kathy lurches over towards Willis, leering and cupping her hand as though squeezing a bunch of grapes. Abigail crawls on to the dais and puts her head in HFWOBC's lap.
Abigail "I like you. You have a nice head."
HFWOBC "I like you too."
Emily "What's in these elephants then?"
Curtain.
Enter five women, Jo, Leslie, Emily, Abigail, and Kathy, drunk, passing a bottle half full of a virulently pink liquid.
Kathy "Where's he got to then?"
Leslie "I don't know, do I? I just saw some lad sneak off through that door we just come through."
Kathy "Well, he ain't here, is he?"
Kathy and Leslie look around, Abigail dry heaves, Jo and Emily wrestle over the bottle.
Leslie "Nope, he ain't."
Abigail "Wooooo!!! Yeah!! Come and get it boys!"
Emily "Come on Jozzers, give me some of that you tight slag."
Jo "Piss off and get your own. Yer always splongin'"
Emily "Splongin! Yers wasted."
Jo "Bugger you all, I'm off to the pub." Jo exits stage right
Abigail "Pub! Yeah! Wooooooo!"
Leslie "Right, the pub. He's bound to be in the pub."
Kathy "Why's that then Lezzers?"
Leslie "'Cos he's a man right, stands to reason."
Kathy "Oh, right. Where's the bloody pub then?"
Emily "Wasn't there one around here? The Wangled Podger or something."
Abigail "Wooo! Addled Prophet!"
Kathy "So where is it?"
Emily "Jozzers went that way, she's a bloody bloodhound for pubs."
Kathy "Right. OK. Let's find Jozzers, that blokes not getting away, he had the hots for me and I ain't waiting another week. I'm dry as a desert.
Abigail falls. Exeunt all stage right, Abigail crawling.
Scene two. The Addled Prophet. Painted white with garlands of flowers hanging from the walls. A small dais center stage. HFWOBC is seated on a cushion on the dais. Around him are Ughrit, Landlord, and various bandits/patrons sitting on the floor.
HFWOBC "...so it seems to me that it would be easier if we just shared a bit more of our stuff with people who need it. I have found that people are very helpful if you....."
Enter Jo.
Jo "Oy! Is this the pub? Oy! I said, 'is this the pub?'"
Landlord "Yes madam, this is the Addled Prophet. If you will just take a seat I will be with you directly."
Jo "Gis us a pint of something, with an elephant. No, an unbrella. Umbrella."
Landlord "Yes madam, in just a moment. I just need to hear a bit more and then I will be right with you.
HFWOBC "Ah yes, where was I? Oh right. In my experience people are quite willing to help out when you just ask nicely."
Ughrit "The thing is Master, that most people are utter bastards around the rest of us, it's just different around you. I was what you might call a professional bastard, a right evil bugger, but then I.."
Jo "Are you sure this is a pub? Looks like a temple or something."
HFWOBC "You keep saying that Ughrit but there's nothing special about.."
Jo "Oy! I asked you a question. And where's my drink? You lot are bleedin' chovvernisticalls."
Landlord "Sorry chaps, I'll be right back. What will it be madam?"
Jo "Toldja, pint of umbrella."
Landlord "Certainly madam. Coming right up."
HFWOBC "What were you saying again Ughrit?
Ughrit "I was saying? Oh, yes. I was saying that it's different around you, people just are nicer."
HFWOBC "Well, Ughrit, I don't see how there's anything about me that's special, perhaps if we are all just a bit nicer than everyone will be..."
Enter Emily, Kathy, Leslie, and Abigail, loudly.
Emily "Here it is. Wait, is this a pub?"
Jo "Yeah, is Apple Moffit."
Landlord "Welcome to The Addled Prophet ladies. Can I help you?"
Abigail "Oooooooo. He's a big one."
Leslie "Jozzers, what are you drinking?"
Jo "Elephant. Pint."
Leslie "Good on ya. We'll have six then guvnor."
HFWOBC "So what we need to do is just trust each other a little more and then it seems to me that.."
Kathy "Who's the foreign fella?"
Landlord 'Well, he's.."
Kathy "Is he a mime? I love mimes. I think. Hey Lezzers, do I like mimes?"
Leslie "No, you bleedin' hate them."
Kathy "That's a shame then. He seems a bit cuddly to me. Like a pony."
Abigail "Wooooo! Foreign meat!"
Jo "Spicy."
Emily "So what's going on with the decor then?"
Landlord "Well, you know how it is. We just kind of felt that it needed a change, something a little more serene, a bit more uplifting than a pub."
Emily "Our Kaff's lookin' for something a bit more uplifting too."
Jo "Yeah, like them skirts. Although it don't take much."
Kathy "You cow! Anyway, that reminds me, is he in here?"
Kathy, Leslie, and Jo look around the pub. Abigail falls down and crawls towards the dais.
Emily "Uplifting eh? Seems a bit religious to me. Like this elephant is a bit naughty. I never did like the temple, I always needed a wee."
Jo "Kaffs, there he is, in the corner."
Kathy "Lovely one Jozzers. Ooh look at him in the corner pretending not to see me. I like the shy ones."
Leslie "And the loud ones."
Emily "And the tall ones."
Abigail "Foreign meat!"
Kathy "Cooey, I see you there loverboy. No need to act all shy."
Willis "Madam, I have told you before, I am engaged to be married."
Kathy "That don't bother me my darling. It'll be like I'm breaking you in for her. If you think about it she should be thanking me. All the rest of her life with someone who can't find the bucket in the dark. That's a tragedy, that is.
Willis "Madam, please!"
Kathy "Well, since you asked so nicely I'm willing to play along. A madam eh? I don't think I've done that one yet."
Kathy lurches over towards Willis, leering and cupping her hand as though squeezing a bunch of grapes. Abigail crawls on to the dais and puts her head in HFWOBC's lap.
Abigail "I like you. You have a nice head."
HFWOBC "I like you too."
Emily "What's in these elephants then?"
Curtain.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
The Move
To the great delight of everyone who knows us my darling wife got a new job a little over a year ago. This meant escape from the fetid hellhole that is Ibedrola Renewables. She giggled for weeks. The new job was about thirty miles away, and thirty miles on Houston freeways at rush hour(s) takes a long, arduous time. Since we are not fans of the nice suburban neighborhood in which we have our house it all made sense to move.
So, we have rented a house while we prepare our house for sale. This means that at present we are both renting a house, paying a mortgage, and also paying to fix the house we own, but don't live in. Money is gushing down the gutters. This means that when the house is ready we need it to sell pretty quickly. In order to facilitate this I got a house inspection done so that we could fix up the problems that might be found in an inspection for a sale.
I was lucky enough to find an excellent inspector who proceeded to find quite a few more problems than expected. Damp and rot, electrical problems, flashing, structural issues, heating/air conditioning. Basically something like $10,000 worth of work. This is pretty astonishing as we had already put in something like $15,000 into fixing problems. Anyway, work starts today to get that fixed up and we should be able to put the house up for sale in April. My darling wife informs me that the average time for a house in the area to be on the market is less than a month. We may be free by my birthday in May.
My darling wife goes to work, and I am very appreciative of that. I do the other stuff, and at times like this she is very appreciative of that. My task was to find a house for rent, that took a giant dog, that was close to her work, that we could afford while also paying a mortgage, in a neighborhood where we wouldn't be killed and eaten (that neighborhood is about ten miles due east). The internet is wonderful for such things and I found this house, in which I am sitting now. I called in the first few hours of it being listed, the broker looked at a married, white couple who owned a house and the rental house was off the list. That's what privilege means.
The next step was to get my darling wife into the new place with the leas disturbance possible, that is essentially my job. She has done very well in telling me that it was great to leave one house in the morning and go home to a new house in the evening with all the necessary stuff already there and set up. I still do a couple of trips a week up to the old house to get even more of the junk we own. I still plan on giving away or trashing about a third of the things we own. A great deal of stuff is still in the boxes used to transport them from Portland.
The new house is a bit strange in some ways. The neighborhood must have been an aspirational middle-class place since it surrounds a golf course, but that was forty years ago. The house is shabby, stained, aged, incompetently maintained. We live right on the edge of the residential portion, right up against a pretty big road. Over the fence I can see a Whataburger, a thrift store, a pharmacy and a halal Mediterranean (sorry, I had to stop and drool for a moment) place. I can walk to things! Although I do have to cross four lanes of city traffic.
The yard is huge and fenced and also shaded by huge trees. Once the constant traffic slips away from the forefront of your mind it is really very pleasant, and the pets already love it. There is a sense of a retreat within the middle of everything. There is intense busyness just a few steps away, but I can read a book in the sunshine by myself.
We have found two perfectly adequate English pubs, one of which we can reach on bikes and possibly survive the trip. We have watched rugby in a packed pub full of genuine British and Irish people. We apparently live right by Chinatown and so I am starting the arduous task of working my way through all of the restaurants. There is an enormous amount of things to do close by. There's even a bus stop right by our house.
What is important? What you feel. The two of us have had a difficult time recently. I think the worry over the move, money, cocking everything up had a knock-on effect with my bipolar and I had a more extreme case of what I call "the wobbles" with short, sharp shocks of depression with the accompanying feelings of being useless. For my lovely, darling, super-wonderful wife it is February. Before February came November, December and January, and while being this far south is helpful that is still a bad situation for her.
This post was originally started in early February and I would say that the only things that have happened in the meantime is an increased cheerfulness as a result of things getting done on the house we own and the passing of the seasons, and still no real friends down here. There's a lot of me that is putting off things until our house is sold, which isn't really sensible other than me rationing the amount of emotional energy I am putting into everything.
It's the most beautiful time of the year here in Texas, the blossoms are out, the temperatures are getting to the perfect setting as we are starting to get sunny days at 75 degrees. I have a certain amount of monkish calm about the situation, things are moving in the right direction. Sometime this summer we will be renting a house in an exciting neighborhood (the gunshots in the middle of the night seem to be recreational (seriously)) with enough money for us to feel easy, a strong marriage (how I love her) and the ability to leave Texas should we wish to.
I mayeven start posting on this blog again.
So, we have rented a house while we prepare our house for sale. This means that at present we are both renting a house, paying a mortgage, and also paying to fix the house we own, but don't live in. Money is gushing down the gutters. This means that when the house is ready we need it to sell pretty quickly. In order to facilitate this I got a house inspection done so that we could fix up the problems that might be found in an inspection for a sale.
I was lucky enough to find an excellent inspector who proceeded to find quite a few more problems than expected. Damp and rot, electrical problems, flashing, structural issues, heating/air conditioning. Basically something like $10,000 worth of work. This is pretty astonishing as we had already put in something like $15,000 into fixing problems. Anyway, work starts today to get that fixed up and we should be able to put the house up for sale in April. My darling wife informs me that the average time for a house in the area to be on the market is less than a month. We may be free by my birthday in May.
My darling wife goes to work, and I am very appreciative of that. I do the other stuff, and at times like this she is very appreciative of that. My task was to find a house for rent, that took a giant dog, that was close to her work, that we could afford while also paying a mortgage, in a neighborhood where we wouldn't be killed and eaten (that neighborhood is about ten miles due east). The internet is wonderful for such things and I found this house, in which I am sitting now. I called in the first few hours of it being listed, the broker looked at a married, white couple who owned a house and the rental house was off the list. That's what privilege means.
The next step was to get my darling wife into the new place with the leas disturbance possible, that is essentially my job. She has done very well in telling me that it was great to leave one house in the morning and go home to a new house in the evening with all the necessary stuff already there and set up. I still do a couple of trips a week up to the old house to get even more of the junk we own. I still plan on giving away or trashing about a third of the things we own. A great deal of stuff is still in the boxes used to transport them from Portland.
The new house is a bit strange in some ways. The neighborhood must have been an aspirational middle-class place since it surrounds a golf course, but that was forty years ago. The house is shabby, stained, aged, incompetently maintained. We live right on the edge of the residential portion, right up against a pretty big road. Over the fence I can see a Whataburger, a thrift store, a pharmacy and a halal Mediterranean (sorry, I had to stop and drool for a moment) place. I can walk to things! Although I do have to cross four lanes of city traffic.
The yard is huge and fenced and also shaded by huge trees. Once the constant traffic slips away from the forefront of your mind it is really very pleasant, and the pets already love it. There is a sense of a retreat within the middle of everything. There is intense busyness just a few steps away, but I can read a book in the sunshine by myself.
We have found two perfectly adequate English pubs, one of which we can reach on bikes and possibly survive the trip. We have watched rugby in a packed pub full of genuine British and Irish people. We apparently live right by Chinatown and so I am starting the arduous task of working my way through all of the restaurants. There is an enormous amount of things to do close by. There's even a bus stop right by our house.
What is important? What you feel. The two of us have had a difficult time recently. I think the worry over the move, money, cocking everything up had a knock-on effect with my bipolar and I had a more extreme case of what I call "the wobbles" with short, sharp shocks of depression with the accompanying feelings of being useless. For my lovely, darling, super-wonderful wife it is February. Before February came November, December and January, and while being this far south is helpful that is still a bad situation for her.
This post was originally started in early February and I would say that the only things that have happened in the meantime is an increased cheerfulness as a result of things getting done on the house we own and the passing of the seasons, and still no real friends down here. There's a lot of me that is putting off things until our house is sold, which isn't really sensible other than me rationing the amount of emotional energy I am putting into everything.
It's the most beautiful time of the year here in Texas, the blossoms are out, the temperatures are getting to the perfect setting as we are starting to get sunny days at 75 degrees. I have a certain amount of monkish calm about the situation, things are moving in the right direction. Sometime this summer we will be renting a house in an exciting neighborhood (the gunshots in the middle of the night seem to be recreational (seriously)) with enough money for us to feel easy, a strong marriage (how I love her) and the ability to leave Texas should we wish to.
I mayeven start posting on this blog again.
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