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.






 

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.

Religious Trends in the USA

A new Harris Poll on religious belief in the USA has just been published.  It asks a good number of general questions about belief and some specifics, particularly with regard to Christianity.  It's an interesting, easy-to-read article about perhaps the most important cultural aspect in the USA.

I wrote a little post on religious trends, essentially saying that religion is moving from hierarchical systems to individual belief, that it has been doing so for some time, and that the fastest growing section was what I called "Spiritual but not religious" which I consider very useful nonsense.

This Harris poll is the most up-to-date, concrete evidence of what is happening with religious belief in the USA and it has the added advantage of showing the change in percentages over a ten year period so that we can extrapolate trends.

The summary of the report can be that basically people are getting less religious.  There are more Atheists, more people uncertain about the existence of God, less certainty over what God wants, a reduction in those who believe God acts on Earth.  The USA is becoming less religious.

That the USA is becoming less religious isn't a surprise to me the surprise to me is the rate of change, and what seems to be an increasing rate. In eight years the percentage of respondents who reported that they believed in God dropped by eight percentage points.  The number of Atheists (certain there is no God) more than doubled in ten years, from four to nine percent of the population.  These are huge demographic changes.  Interestingly the only group that expressed a belief in God that grew was the ones who said they were "somewhat certain there is a God", which would be the people I would peg in the spiritual but not religious area.

The reason that I think there will be an increase in the rate of the increase in disbelief is largely based on demographics, younger people believe at a substantially lower rate than older people.  The drops in rates of belief get larger between each age group, so the difference in rates of belief between 25 year olds and 40 year olds is greater than the difference between 40 year olds and 55 year olds.

Don't get me wrong, the USA is still a very religious country in comparison to other industrialized nations with two thirds of young people still believing in God (in some manner).  There is still one third of the population who think the Bible is entirely the Word of God.  About two thirds still believe in some form of magic (miracles, the soul, witchcraft etc..)

There are two ideas that I really want to get across.  The first is that if the change in belief happens over the next decade at the same rate as the last decade then the numbers of people in the USA who think there isn't, or probably isn't, a god will be about fifty percent, the same number as think that there is a god.  The second is that according to this poll less than one third of Americans think God controls what happens on the Earth.

Curmudgeon Progress

In my long term quest to become a curmudgeon worth talking to there are certain milestones hat signal progress.  I have just realized that I have already passed one of these milestones.

The milestone in question is the classic, "things didn't cost as much in my day!"

It is impossible for anyone who wishes to enjoy life to constantly update the full repertoire of our knowledge of pricing, and so we tend to develop a rough guide.  Most of us know that a gallon of milk is closer to $5 than $15, but few of us know how much it is to the dime.  It is extremely hard to change one's understanding of the price of goods in the gaps between actually purchasing the goods.  As I have said before, the environment in which humans largely evolved was, in comparison with today, extremely static  The value of a tool was simply the value of that tool for someone's entire (probably short) life. The increase in the price of items is not something that is naturally understood by most people.

Prices go up, and they go up almost constantly, and actually quite consistently since about 1970.  This doesn't mean that everyone keeps getting poorer (actually, over the forty year period I mentioned above it's slightly the other way) because income increases as well.  What it all comes down to is the terrifying subtlety of compound interest.  You barely notice a 3% change in prices year-to-year, but you multiply that 3% over a while and the change is huge.  Prices double about every twenty years. For me, twenty years ago was 1993, and that's when I really started working properly and taking care of myself entirely.  That is the point where my basic understanding of prices started.

I have just noticed that I find almost everything shockingly expensive.  $7 for a Big Mac Meal?  I remember when it passed the $3 mark (when I actually ate them).  $50 jeans?  I remember when Gap jeans were cool AND cost $30.  I go grocery shopping, and while I understand that I am shopping for two, and I buy nicer things than when I worked on a direct care workers wage, I still spend more than four times as much each visit.  While I have thought of myself as rich, after all our income is such a bigger number than we have had before, it still seems that we should be getting further than we are.

What I am now trying to do is recalibrate all of my price and wage intuitions with updated information, simply based on a rough 20 year/double amount basis.  I am not sure that will make me feel substantially less rich, but it will remove a fair amount of my frustration at what things cost.

My first full time job paid me $16,400 a year.  Now that would be about $30,000.  I was not well off but I could afford a used car, an apartment, food, and um cheap beer for entertainment.  At the time $30,000 would have been easy-street. So, I have to understand that $20,000 a year is poor (for the USA), and $100,000 is not obscenely wealthy but rather upper-middle class.  The most money I ever made was $30,000, roughly ten years ago.  That would have been the equivalent of $23,000 in 1993 and $40,000 today.  That was a really good wage for social work, about twice the official poverty line.

The upshot of all of this is that either everything costs twice as much as it should, or my wife makes half as much as I thought.

Comparisons

I am not someone who knee-jerks a requirement for two sides to every story.  Sometimes there is a story and some people who are idiotically yelling in the face of facts. To a large extent this is what cable news shows are. Sometimes things are very complicated and you can only tell parts of the story in any given setting, like history, or psychology.  However, there are times when adding the other part of the story is useful.

It has seemingly come to the attention of many people that there are some very, very rich people.  These people are so rich that they can't even spend all their money.  A person with the relatively tiny income of $1;000,000 a year has to spend more than $2,500 a day just to not break even.  Given a life expectancy of 100 years someone with one tenth of a billion dollars would have to find ways to spend that $2,500 every day for their entire life or get even richer.  At last count, there are 442 people at least ten times richer than that in the USA.  There are people so rich that it is almost impossible for them not to get more rich.

Furthermore, these very rich people have power based on this money and can use that power to change the system so that it is easier for them to make more money.  You know what?  They do that.  As a result these super-rich have been getting super-richier, particularly since Reagan.

Meanwhile, the income of your regular Janets has largely stagnated and so the gap between the very rich and the poor has grown larger.  Janet thinks this unfair and has furrowed her brow and is considering whether, maybe, if this keeps up, she might do something about it.  Maybe she'll write a blog post about it, or share outrage with her facebook friends.  Meanwhile Janet's weird cousin is building a bunker and stashing an enormous horde of weaponry, but that's a different story.

OK, some people being so rich they can't even spend their money and others being so poor they need help to eat is a bad situation that should be fixed.  Pretty much everyone I know thinks this is basically true and is outraged about the situation.

On the other hand...

In Rwanda the GDP per person (nominal) is $730 a year.  Now, because there are some richer people in Rwanda, most people there will have fewer resources than that.  90% of Rwandans are subsistence farmers.  25% of Rwandans don't have a clean water supply.  I think/hope you get the picture.

We have got to the point where there are three groups.  The nefarious super-rich, us, the deeply poor.  We seem to spend most of our time concentrating our attention, outrage, frustration, etc. on the differences between us and the super-rich.  I ask you, which is really the biggest difference, the one between us and the super-rich or between us and the super-poor?  I hope you got that one right.

In my opinion the inequality that exists in the world is more about us and the really poor than between we rich people and people who really are very rich indeed.  When was the last time you heard about how unfair that was?  When was the last time you thought about that?  Have you thought that what would be really important in politics would be some redistribution of wealth from the USA to Rwanda.  For some perspective, the GDP of Rwanda is about three times the US National Parks budget. 

The next part that we (and I certainly include myself) tend to do is come up with a whole list of reasons, excuses, and distractions to stop ourselves from sending three quarters of our money to Rwanda.  None of us are going to do it, let's be honest about that.  But isn't this what the super-rich do as well?  The sponging under-class of lazy layabouts throwing away their money on drugs meme is pretty much just that.

I am not saying that there isn't a huge, unnecessary, unfair inequality of wealth in the USA and that this hurts people every day.  I am not saying that you are an evil person unless you give away all of your money.  For Christ's sake we aren't Jesus!  Matthew 19:21.  I am just saying that we should spend at least as much of our time looking down as looking up.

In fact, looking down tells us for what we should be grateful.  Noticing the things that should make us grateful makes us happier.  It also can lead us to give to those less fortunate, and giving makes us more happy.   

Chapter 15

It had been sunny and dry at some time in the past.  Although that was probably today it seemed like an eternity.  The rain had reached a level of malevolence to which words like, "poured" and "fell" no longer were relevant.  Then there was the mud.  The mud clutched, and grabbed at boots like a horde of  starving beggars.  In the lashing rain and the thick mud falls were inevitable, and upon arising the men would discover that the mud was stuck to them like plaster, and as time went on the mud insinuated itself through each cranny and crevice of clothing.

Heavy, wet, cloying, stinking, foul, slow, gritty, dark misery.

Ughrit was not happy.  The Inn was apparently always, "just a little further."  Ughrit had finished with, "just a little further" and was now more interested in "dry and extremely violent."  He wrenched his vast boot out of the mud and splashed it shortly ahead, lightning flashed.  A titanic boom filled the heavens.  Ughrit slipped and fell face-first into the mire.

"Bugger fuck damn stupid prick fart onion-eating motherpoking rotten shit shit shit ass!"

"A light!" came a call, "up on that hill I saw lantern light."

All thoughts of swift, sloppy homicide left the exhausted mind of Ughrit and he desperately clambered to his feet, fell, writhed on the ground, swore, got to his feet again, swore some more, trudged a few yards, slipped, gathered himself, felt a stream of something organic slip into his armpit, trudged, slipped, pulled a muscle in his lower back, swore..........

Some long, long time later Ughrit stood before a door.  A door from which the sound of merriment flowed.  A golden glow of lantern light spilled out through a couple of windows.  When the lightning lit up the world there was a sense of some vast, shambling structure behind the door, but more than that it was impossible to tell.  The crew was dragging themselves along behind him, sometimes quite literally.  Ughrit took out his massive axe, threw open the door and stepped in.  Another titanic lightning flash seared the eyes of everyone outside, momentarily blinding the straggling trail of brigands.

Within The Addled Prophet all eyes turned to the doorway.  There stood a massive figure, all in black, back-lit by the sky's fury, and emphasized by a huge, deep crash and rumble.  Ughrit stepped through the doorway into warmth, light, and dryness.  He was tired and miserable, but he was here to do something.  He started to raise his axe when a weird looking man exclaimed, "Oh!  You poor man, out there in this miserable weather.  Landlord, do you think we might find this gentleman some hot water and some towels."

Ughrit was ushered to a chair near the fire in the inevitable manner brought on by considerate bustling.  Ughrit could not have imagined fighting against the well-meaning little man at that moment.  he sat down, leant back on his chair and simply absorbed the warmth of the fire.  An unfamiliar lassitude came over his limbs and his mind slowed and relaxed.  He realized that he was in a nice, little pub surrounded by people who welcomed him.  A pint was pressed into his hand and he realized that this was his dream.  Just this simple little moment was his dream.

The rest of the crew blundered in, singly or in pairs.  While they lackadaisically brandished weapons, and yelled some uninspired battle cries, cut off suddenly, within moments they were welcomed, and brought to the fire.  After a while their weapons started forming a haphazard pile in a corner, they had rare smiles on their faces, and soon some of them found themselves actually saying, "Thank you!"

Perhaps an hour later the tall and slender figure of Akhbar crawled over the doorstep.  Akhbar was not an athlete.  He expected blood, smashed furniture, possibly sobbing.  He heard cheering, and then applause?  Applause? Pushing himself up on to his knees he scanned the room and found Ughrit and the crew intermixed with what seemed to be happy patrons.  Akhbar began to feel a deep sense of peace, an acceptance of his situation, a welcoming.  Fearing that this could only be a magical trap set to capture or kill Ughrit and his men, Akhbar fled out into the night, desperate to get himself away from the peace, the warmth, the welcome.

Just Some Stuff

I'll start with an update to The Latest in that the brand name pills appear to be working.  After the first couple of days there have been no symptoms over nearly a month, a longer period than leading up to this change.  Still, the whole thing is unpredictable, nobody really knows why the disease happens, how it works, or why some drugs seem to help.  Who knows what things may come?

We went on holiday to Cahuita in Costa Rica, our favorite place to be.  This wasn't a risky decision, we had been there before and loved it, but we hadn't gone somewhere together with the sole purpose being to have a nice time.  Previously we had been seeing family, or friends, or a side effect of a business trip, so we hadn't gone on a proper holiday in several years.  My only concern is that we had previously left the darkness of winter in the north for the warm sun of the tropics, while this time we were leaving from essentially the same weather to where we were arriving.

It was simply delightful.  So beautiful, so calm, so friendly.  We had our honeymoon suite, a wooden room with corrugated iron roof and a tiled bathroom, and a balcony with a view over the bay.  We saw amazing natural sights, from a lion fish on a coral reef to pelicans diving for fish, to a sloth ten feet away, to the herding of bait fish into a ball by tarpon, and more and more and more....

The driving was a different matter.

Finally, someone who I had known, someone who was in a band with me for a few months, someone I would see very intermittently, who I was friends with on facebook, blew his brains out.  As soon as I heard he was dead suicide was my first thought.  Over the last year he had got married and divorced, he had apologized to people in general for his behavior, he suffered from bad migraines.  He worked for the TSA and was one of the people furloughed during the government shutdown and was pawning his stuff to pay his mortgage.  I imagine him that last night, worried about losing his house, unable to sleep from the pain of a migraine, depressed and alone, where there was no hope he could find.  He had always been kind to me.

Perhaps I'm just not someone for weeping about death.  Perhaps I have been around enough tragedy.  Perhaps I have reached somewhere secure enough that sad things can happen and I can accept them.  This is the second person I have known to kill themselves in the last three years and I take it as a new fact of life and keep going, although just as with everything, I think about it.