Ghost Notes

I could listen to Frazey Ford sing the phonebook.

Yo, Saturnalia

Happy Hanukkah! Happy Solstice!

The customary greeting for the occasion is a "Io, Saturnalia!" — Io (pronounced "yo") being a Latin interjection related to "ho" (as in "Ho, praise to Saturn").

I bet you didn't know that 'Yo' and 'Ho' were really quite acceptable Roman greetings now did you? They've gotten such a bad rap of late.

There are 3 shopping days left and I have completed 10% of my expected purchases. Deadlines are my primary motivator. Getting ahead of the game is something I continue to work on with little success ;) Luckily the editors at the Spuds 'n Taters haven't put me on deadline yet. But the day is coming, I can feel it, when they hold my little feet to the fire. If you count yourself among the enlightened to own satellite radio, today has been a wonderful day on the Grateful Dead channel. They are playing 24 hours of Dark Stars to celebrate the Darkest Day of the year (in this hemisphere). And a joyful noise it has been and is right now behind me, from Nov 11, 1973. Deadbase tells me that was at Winterland and it went Dark Star> Mind Left Body Jam> Eyes> China Doll, Sugar Magnolia. That is hot! I hope they play the Eyes->China Doll too. Next year, I plan on taking my banjo to Stonehenge on solstice day and playing my own Dark Star Jam. It'll be a free show, so come on out. Nope, they didn't play the Eyes> China. C'est la vie!

Way Down in the Hole

I'd really rather be under the covers and dreaming right now instead of pouring another glass of wine. It's after midnight, warm and rainy outside; perfect for sleeping. Yet here I am wide awake. And I have to be at work early tomorrow. The light just went out in the den. We're in for a rough one tonight. I feel it in my bones. Red sky in the morning. And there is no reason why. I'm trying to blog this insomnia away can't you tell.

Somewhere dawn is breaking

Light is streaking across the floor

Church bells are ringing

I wonder who they're ringing for

Travel under any star

You'll see me wherever you are

 -Bob Dylan, Dreamin' of You

O, it's going to be a bad day later when the sun comes up. Almost time for another glass. Did you know this year is getting another second? I'm going to need it. The earth is moving slower. Aren't we all? Did you know GPS time is 14 seconds ahead of UTC? It's all relative people. Passing one A.M. C'mon red wine work your magic! Back baby, back in time, I wanna go back, when you were mine. Arpeggios! Arpeggios make me sleepy. Noted.

fugue, 2. a state or period of loss of awareness of one's identity, often coupled with flight from one's usual environment, associated with certain forms of hysteria.

This week's music pick, J. S. Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Learn it. Know it. Live it. Pull out all the stops for it. I need some cheese to go with this wine and I have some, arrived today on my porch, on the hottest day of December. Pray that government cheese didn't go bad. I just had a flashback that I was in Korea. I liked Korean food. I had trouble sleeping there too. It's a long way from home. Most places are like everywhere else just a little different. Maybe I should move on to the harder stuff? Whiskey? You're all I need, I'm in the middle of your picture, lyin in the reeds. I'm talking that jive and drinkin that wine, maybe it's time? Do you see me yet, under the stars?

Nothingness

28 days without blogging. 22 days since I left the boat. 5 days since I joined a gym. 3 days since I ate turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and gravy. 2 days since my last sip of alcohol. 1 day until Monday. A lifetime to be alone. I hope everyone out there had a pleasant Thanksgiving and a safe and uneventful journey back home (if you left it). I spent my holiday in Keswick, ran into a friend I hadn't seen in many years and ate my face off. I also slept my ass off. I would have stayed and slept some more but I had to work on Saturday. By work, I mean volunteering at a golf course as the starter so that I can get free golf. Hard times. The work this time of year is easy but come spring, I will begin to earn those free rounds. I went to the gym today and ran slowly on a treadmill. I wanted to watch football whilst exercising but they only get 5 channels and there was no football to be found. 5 channels is a bit weak in my opinion, but heck, I'm not there to watch television, right?! I'm listening to boxawine doing their 2nd best Rank Stranger ever recorded. That band had talent. Shit, next up in the party shuffle is Earl Scruggs doing Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Way to show me up Earl! I'm having a conversation with my iTunes, is that a bad thing? Maybe 28 days wasn't long enough?

Island of Regrets

It's my favorite night of the year! It's the night we get right with God and stop all this Daylight Savings bull shit. The only plus to this farce is the extra hour of sleep we all get one night of the year. Unless you have to work past 2 am, in which case, you get an extra hour of work! Unlucky bastards. We've also put October, the coolest month, behind us, begrudgingly. November brings the beginning of winter, but also Thanksgiving. Turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries, corn pudding, and stuffing. Dirty leaves and the dead ground. Fires in fireplaces. Smoke and cinders. Ashes ashes we all fall down.
I wish I felt like fixing this awful picture layout, but I got to work at 4am today and have no wits left about me. Forgive me my trespass. These pictures are from my last day off trip to St. Simon's and Jekyll Islands. Nice places. Surprisingly crowded from the Georgia Florida football game (sorry Georgia!). I enjoyed a great evening at the end of a pier at Jekyll Island, sitting at the minutest of raw bars watching the sun set, sailboats and shrimpers navigate the channel and eating oysters and shrimp. One of the shrimp boats docked and brought fresh catch up to the bar. How cool is that?! The waitress had a voice of an angel (some frisky table of golfers kept asking her to sing) with the looks to match. I don't know much about Jekyll, but is is relatively underdeveloped and thank God for that. It is an oasis in this era of the homogeneous faux bourgeoisie.

Egrets, I've had a few...

Days 1-3.

post removed due to poor taste

On Assignment

The editors at Spuds 'n Taters are sending me on an all expense paid trip to Georgia, for a month of dispatches about, well, anything and everything. I will be working extensively for my other job, but will have some time to play golf and explore some barrier islands on my days off (all 3 of them). We begin tomorrow with a long fast drive down 95. No steam powered aereoplanes in the Spuds 'n Taters budget for FY '09. I also hope to begin serious training since I won't have much else to do when I get off work each day. But right now, I have much laundry to do, and not much time left to do it!

TK421 out.

October is the cruelest month

There are homemade donuts in my office and they are killing me figuratively and literally. I can't stop eating them. They are my Achilles heel. They are smothered in sugar and dripping in delicious deep fried fatty goodness. And they taste great with some real non pasteurized hot apple cider. O Heaven! October is the month of Apple Pickin' Festivals. Growing up, we went to the Graves Mountain Lodge every October and ate barf in the barn (my brother's endearing term for Brunswick stew), apple cider, apple sauce, apple butter, and cornbread, and then we picked more apples and we played in the creek and looked for rocks and ate candy sticks and listened to football on the radio on the way home. One year I bought a magnifying glass from the local flea market and burnt ants with it till my Mother yelled at me. Some years they had a bluegrass band. Some years they had a fire in the ginormous fireplace in the lodge. Once they stopped letting you get free second helpings of Brunswick stew, my Dad would thereafter always gripe to them about not getting seconds anymore. During college, I remember going to Carter's Mountain outside of Charlottesville and picking apples in October. And they had warm freshly made donuts and hot apple cider. God bless them. And this is all to say, I love October and donuts and apples and Fall. And the Ironman comeback starts in November!

A Loss For Words

Writing is hard.  It's harder if you're stupid.  I've wanted to write something in here for days just to get Polishing the Turd off the masthead.  How did that shit get past the editor?  Really, we need to put some better people on staff here at the Spuds 'n Taters.  But to my original point.  I've always known that writing is an art and a skill, but when you haven't had to write anything since college on a regular basis (hey you were an engineer and that's not real writing anyway) and you try to write something interesting at least to yourself if not Audacious Reader every day or so, well, then you really appreciate those who can craft a fancy essay frequently. But it is better to beg forgiveness than ask permission any way.  So forgive me.

On the bright side, it is Fall finally, one of my favourite four seasons. I love it when the leaves change colour and the air is cooler and crisper.

Bury me in a pile of dead leaves

Put two pennies in my eyes

And cover me with dead leaves

 - from October, Jon Dee Graham

October

and Kingdoms rise

and Kingdoms fall

But you go on

and on

 - from October, U2

Polishing the Turd

I work in an old decrepit armpit of a 50s style government building. It leaks, the pipes are rusted and are known to burst from time to time sending rivers of water down the halls and turning some poor comrade's office into a lake. For at least 10 years now, it's been scheduled for demolition 'next year'. We had a new building a couple of years ago that was stolen away just as our cubicles were being offloaded because the dimwits in the Pentagon thought some DC folks wanted to move to King Gorgeous Virginia. Puhlease! We've been forced to move some people to a temporary new home because of mold in their wing. And yet, somebody recently decided to refurbish two of the bathrooms. Did they replace the 40 year old toilets that leak? Did they add some (any!) sort of ventilation? No! They painted it. Blue and yellow like the local high school colors. It's like I'm back in PE. It's an effing pep rally in there. That, my friends, is polishing the turd, almost too literally.
OK, so the poll results are in and it's a tie! I asked Dick Cheney to break the tie and he told me to eff off. So I am going to break it and I chose: Scotland! Now for the hard part, saving pennies. Thank you for voting.

Charcoal and diamonds

I had an encouraging run yesterday, because it was the first time I hadn't felt like complete shite since I started running more often a few weeks ago. Maybe it was the renewed vigor from the comeback post. Having a long term goal is a good thing. Also important are interim goals. So I'll set one now. Run a turkey trot this year. There, I've got it in the books, a race before the year is up. And one more, for the weekend, take the bike out for a ride. It's been almost a year since I've swum a lap too, I really should do that before the year is up. And then I can start thinking about a good tri to do next year. Some of me wants to do the Vineman again in '09, but another part of me wants to try something new and not as far away. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The following words got me thinking:

One of the main hazards of objective decision making is caused by a combination of consistency bias, overvaluing what we own and overweighing sunk costs. “I have given up too much to change course” is a common thought pattern that can skew clear judgment. There are also tremendous social pressures that we place on each other to remain consistent in approach. We have an in-built bias against “flip-floppers”. This is a bit odd in a world where most of our key decisions are made against a background of incomplete, and changing, information.
-Gordo Byrn

Often, when I contemplate my next career move, I think I have too much invested in either the Government or Software to give up either. I like Timex watches.

the fatman cometh

I stepped on a scale this morning people, first time in a long time, and I knew, I mean I knew like you know a good melon that it was going to be bad, and I tell you good people, it was all that and a sack of five guys french fries. And on top of it, 5 years ago almost to the day, I finished an Ironman. Mother effer! What the eff happened? But I am here before the Gods and 3 or 4 readers, not to bitch (well maybe a little) but to tell you that I am on the comeback trail. Don't think that the real news is that Lance Armstrong is coming back to professional cycling and the Tour, no Sympathetic Reader!, it is your benevolent Bubba vowing in these pages to get back to the Ironman in 2010. And I'm asking for your help to call me out on this blog if you do not see occasional progress written up. Let us walk this journey together so that we may all celebrate on some day in 2010 when we cross the line one more time.
Let us not forget to vote in the poll either. I thank the 2 intrepid souls (Incognito and A.E.Bayne) who left excellent feedback and voted! All input is greatly appreciated, even if you're a rank stranger who just stumbled accidentally into this bog. The fate of the country depends on it.

A poll -> it's over there on the right ->

I haven't travelled anywhere further than a day's car ride for a couple of years and I have the urge to go long even though I hate long plane rides, but who doesn't you say, and I say, but I really really hate them and I can't sleep on a plane, hell I can't sleep in my own bed and if you know what time it is right now then you know I ain't lyin'. On the low hanging fruit of foreign destinations there are Italy and Spain that I haven't visited yet. But I feel like climbing for some higher fruit. I would add Australia/New Zealand but I think they are too far for the time and money I can afford these days. Japan or Tibet is pushing that envelope, but I really want to go there even if I'll need sedatives to survive the flight. I had the fortune of flying business class to Korea for work and what a difference that makes over coach. 7 course meals, hot towels, big seats that recline 172 degrees. Iceland and Scotland have the benefit of relatively shorter flights. And Russia, well I might want to go there before we start Cold War 2. So I put my fate in the hands of you, Intrepid Reader. I promise to send postcards.

First Post

of September people and I've had a little wine tonight so if things are misspelled or rambling or other mischievousness creeps betwixt the lines then blame Dionysus. I am dorking out tonight, tracking Hanna across the great Carolina bight with Google. I have NOAA weather radio and the Weather Channel going. Candles are lit. Wine is breathing. Cheese is cut. The cat is asleep on the coffee table. Besides a front line squall around 1700 hours, it has been quiet here, almost one could say, calm. Wind speed is 2 knots, east northeast. I have battened down hatches, shuttered windows, brought in the outdoor furniture, disconnected the main breaker from the grid and fired up the wind generators, engaged the reverse osmosis filters, put the gasoline generators on standby, notified the Pentagon that I am on alert and ready to take over Command and Control if the situation demands it, cranked up the Single Side Band radios, checked in with the local repeater, cleaned and loaded revolvers, and stocked the bunker with canned goods. All systems are go for Hanna. I procured enough milk, coffee, cereal and toilet paper earlier today to last me till at least Tuesday and if I ration, the whole week. I had my car towed to Kentucky. But it's all dress rehearsal for the real mother, Ike. Holy Sh!t, I need more wine!
I hope everyone is staying safe out there and out of harm's way. Don't frak with Mother Nature.

Last Post

of August people. I thought I would sneak one more under the wire. I'm watching the weather channel and Jim Cacciatore(?) talk about shrimp boat captains staying with the boat and riding out the hurricane. The boat is their livelihood. I wish them, and anyone else in harm's way, well. Now noticing how many times the phrase "harm's way" is used the night before a hurricane hits. Tomorrow is Labor day and I will labor to find another building in which to labor. Tonight I'm staying in the ships and rocks room. I want to steal this sailboat. I've been reading lots of other blogs and am amazed about how much and how well and how intimate some random people can write. I like to keep Constant Reader at arm plus broomstick's length. I was at a cookout today and ate way too much food but it was good and I did help people move this weekend, somewhat unexpectedly, and that should warrant extra calories though maybe not the brownie and ice cream. Well, that should about wrap up this the last and lamest post of August. See you in September and Happy Labor Day people!

QotD

"I'm an old man but I will return to Abkhazia," he vowed. "Russian, Georgians, Ossetians — we should all be living in peace together, like we did under Stalin."

Poor

Of little importance is the loss of such things as wealth. But a terrible thing is to lose wisdom. Of little importance is the gaining of such things as wealth. Great is the importance of gaining wisdom.
- Buddha

Kerouac, On the Road

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

No!

Less than two months after an ATV accident on his Charlottesville area farm, Dave Matthews Band saxophonist LeRoi Moore has died from unexpected complications stemming from his injuries, according to numerous internet reports. On June 30, Moore was seriously injured while riding his all terrain vehicle on his farm outside Charlottesville. Initially listed in critical condition, Moore was released from the hospital several weeks later, only to return to UVA medical center on July 21, reportedly with complications from a collapsed lung.

According to a release from the Dave Matthews Band publicist on TMZ.com, Moore died unexpectedly today in Los Angeles at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, where he had recently returned “to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program.”

letting go

The more I work on my resume and search for a new job, the more I realize that I might have to leave software to find happiness. But software has taken good care of me these last 14 years. Considering what a life in hardware (what I actually got a degree in) would have led to, I should be thankful (I didn't so much earn that degree as survive it. That story could be filed under another post titled 'shame'). But we've grown apart, software and me. I'd like to see her now and again, but not every day. And yet the thought of starting over with something else is terrifying. I'm having a hard enough time writing a software resume, Buddha help me if I have to write a resume for something I don't have much experience with. Maybe I can find a rebound job that would ease the transition from software to ??? In this market, is it wise to go looking for something new? You could easily be left in the cold, outside software's window, begging to get back in for a hot meal and a shower. O government software, how could I ever leave your warmth and comfort in this time of uncertainty and strife? Forgive me!

down at the old choke and puke

I watched them clean the grease traps and I knew, like you know a good melon. I took a last swig of burnt coffee from a thick diner mug and motioned to the waitress to bring me the check please and the price of everything has gone up. Reached into the ever shrinking wallet and pulled out a few bills plus tip, left them on the counter under that mug. I looked around the room as I turned towards the door. In the booth by the door, a man younger than myself sat alone holding a note in his left hand. And I knew what I had to do.

Redemption

Is coming.

Bob Dylan wrote

Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece.

Amen brother

The chicken hawks

The Project for the New American Century letter to then President Bill Clinton:

January 26, 1998

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.

Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams, Special Assistant to the President, 2001-
Richard L. Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State 2001-2005
William J. Bennett, author The Book of Virtues, high stakes gambler
Jeffrey Bergner, Assistant Secretary of State, 2005-
John Bolton, Under Secretary of State and UN Ambassador 2001-2006
Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State, 2001-2007
Francis Fukuyama, Member President's Biocouncil on Ethics, 2001-2005
Robert Kagan, foriegn policy advisor to John McCain
Zalmay Khalilzad. U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the UN, 2003-
William Kristol, sycophant
Richard Perle, Chairman of the Board, Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, 2001-2003
Peter W. Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense, 2001-2007
Donald Rumsfeld, SECDEF, 2001-2006
William Schneider, Jr., Civilian advisor to Rumsfeld
Vin Weber, lobbyist
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy SECDEF, 2001-2005 and President of the World Bank
R. James Woolsey, advisor to John McCain
Robert B. Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State and President of the World Bank

Other notable members of PNAC: Dick Cheney and "Scooter" Libby

PNAC has apparently disbanded, their mission having been accomplished.

Tipping Points

>climbs atop high horse<
Here we are again at a career tipping point. Or maybe just beyond the tipping point. I foresee nothing but badness in front of me in my current workspace. The glory days are done and gone. Nothing left but a slow miserable attrition until only a glimmer of the past remains. The natural effect of general decay. Such a good program wasted. Smart people run off and the walking dead or sycophants left behind. Radiated men eating the flesh of radiating men. And sometimes I wonder if that's not what some people want. Maybe it got too hard for them to manage and they'd rather it collapse than take on the challenge? Triumph through ignorance of the problems. Cutting off the nose to spite the face? I don't know what their motivations are. I really like what my job could be, but they've buried it under so much bullshit it's hard to remember what our mission should be. Making some sailors job as easy as it can be in unthinkable situations. So that's what I'm going to seek out, a place where they haven't forgotten who the real customers are and what it is we should be doing for them instead of doing to each other. I only hope such a place still exists in the government.
>/dismounts high horse<

television is a brain suck

it really is hazardous to your health and should come with warning labels. that tube will destroy brain cells as bad as that sweet cheeba does. of course the internet may be an even bigger brain suck, but somehow it feels more productive because a computer is smarter than a tv, so thus and therefore i must be smarter than a tv watcher. but have you ever played with facebook? what a time suck! how do kids get anything accomplished when they've got texting and social networking internet sites and all that jazz at their fingertips 24/7? the school day don't end when the last bell rings, you can sit at home and torture each other well into the wee hours of the night. glad i was born too long ago to deal with that crap.
i bought some cool liquor glasses not because i drink much liquor but because they were wicked awesome and half price and so now i'm thinking about taking up drinking liquor neat. scotch? tequila? homemade corn whiskey?

Good thought

It is important to recognize the power of our emotions--and to take responsibility for them by creating a light and positive atmosphere around ourselves. This attitude of joy that we create helps alleviate states of hopelessness, loneliness, and despair. Our relationships with others thus naturally improve, and little by little the whole of society becomes more positive and balanced.
- Tarthang Tulku

Did you know?

It is winter in New Zealand.

Not raining yet.

Grillin'

Charcoal ain't cooperating and rain is approaching. Will he cook the
pork chops in time? Stay tuned...

Mockingbird

I am in the turret, waiting for a storm that I fear may not come. The cat is in her window perch hoping the mockingbird that likes to terrorize her is busy catching worms. It is warm, but not hot. I would like the rain to come quickly and bring more relief. I've slept beautifully this weekend and I did not play any golf, which turned out to be a blessing. I was able to catch up on some tasks around the house. It is a four day work week hoorah! The cat just sat on the keyboard, I guess she wants to blog too. Maybe she has another side to the mockingbird story. I was really hoping for a good thunderstorm today. I played the guitar today and pondered moving my studio to the dining room. Currently it is in the turret and it is too hot in here most of the time to paint. So I thought moving it downstairs would help keep me motivated. I hear a cicada, shouldn't they be in the ground for another 15 years? I see the mockingbird, but the cat is not on her perch, she's laying on the ground. She must be hot. Did I mention how thankful I was that this is a short work week? I need to work on my resume. I don't know if my current place of work is the right fit. No storm out there but the sky is lit up a burning orange like Atlanta in Gone with the Wind. Who would live in Atlanta before there was air conditioning or even fans? I'd move to Sweden or Norway back in those days. Oh boy, the cat is in the window and I hear the mockingbird getting mad! The crazy bird squaks and flies right up to the window like Maverick buzzing the tower. I did not know mockingbirds behaved this way but when I googled it, you can find you tube videos of them attacking cats. Wow, it is a real cool purple light out there now as the edge of a thunderstorm is passing. Wind is picking up and I hear a light pitter patter of rain on the awning. Oh yeah, it's raining now, better send this off before we get taken off the grid...

Endangered species

I ate crabs today. They were good.

Go Rocco

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
- Buddha

New Post driving range

Soon I will be painting Emily's guitar, fireplace, and friend picture and I will share some Work In Progress (WIP) photos. I'm thinking about going more abstract impressionism and less realism with this one. To invoke a mood rather than depict a scene. My goal is to get enough paintings for a small show someday soon, Fall? Paying the bank to own this home has turned this yahoo into a starving artist.
Yesterday I thought how lucky we are to live in a time when you can listen to any piece of music at any time even if you don't have it in your possession. I can bring up iTunes and hear anything in a couple of minutes if it so pleases this yahoo. Back in the day, way back in the day, you either had to go see someone else play music or make it yourself with your brothers and sisters and mom and pop. Which led me to think that if I'd been born a couple of hundred years ago, I'd have been a better musician because I'd spend every day working at it, just to hear some music. But now I can hear so many musicians play it better than I ever could, so why bother? I think I'd have learned the pipe organ and played a Bach Tocatta and Fugue over and over till my fingers bled, back in 1669. That would have got me some religion too. Not many pipe organs outside of churches. Which leads me to this week's music pick of the week: Songs and Poems for Solo Cello, Wendy Sutter cello, Philip Glass composer. Rocks!

Where you been all this time?

The jury is still out on this one.

Free to good home

Dionysus

is a sailboat that's for sale. A nice Hunter 34 that we used to sail against in the Monday night beer can races on the Potomac. I'm thinking I could sell this house and live on the boat. Dock it at the base. Ride a bike or walk to work. If I need to go anywhere else I can sail and save on gas. Can I get wifi dockside?
I finished the varnishing of Russian Lullaby. Be on the lookout for a photo posting soon. Contest still on. Progress on other paintings is minimalistic. Do you remember a few posts back where I talked about the old farmhouse that Faulkner reincarnate was visiting? I have seen construction vehicles in the driveway and some new boards around the base. They are bringing her back from the grave. Goodbye buzzards. Maybe one day on the way home from work I'll snap a few photos for the blog.
It's good banjer pickin weather. I'm going to dust the strings off and hear what happens. Bubba out!

I am your father

Dollars to Donuts

Its easier to raise a baby than to raise the dead.
-Unknown

FYI, I didn't paint these ;) But I did paint today. I am finished with my ode to Russian vodka. It was a struggle to the end. Now I know how the Germans felt. I am not happy with it. After I put varnish on it, I will take another picture for the blog and will give it away to the first person who leaves a comment with the correct brand of vodka depicted.
I am excited about my newest painting which is just emerging. It is constructed after the picture above. I tend to enjoy the opening moves, fumble my way through the middle, and struggle with the end game. God is in the details though people. I tried to end another painting that has been sitting unfinished for years in the studio but I was thrashing wildly and not succeeding with my vision so I stopped for the day.

I learned some valuable lessons today. It is hard to paint backlit tall beach grass convincingly. You can correct mistakes in oil. At one point I thought I'd totally screwed up Russian Lullaby, and was about to go Jackson Pollock on it, but I took a deep breath and tried to fix it, and did. Finally, junk mail is a useful tool.

That White Sustenance

Long time no blog. I wish I could say I was off saving the world or painting. Well, maybe I was saving the world, one byte at a time, but I wasn't painting. Driving home this afternoon, I passed an old abandoned farmhouse that in it's prime was probably quite charming. It is weathered, gray, and missing most of the glass in the windows and the front door now. It still has two proud chimney's on each shoulder of the house. Today, in the fading orange twilight, it was covered with buzzards, one perched atop each chimney and a couple circling above the house like combat air patrol. A bleak vision to end the work day.

If I were reincarnated, I’d want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything. — William Faulkner

That's one way to look at it Bill. Hell, maybe Bill was hanging out in King George County today.

After a certain number of blog posts about not painting, I believe it will be time to stop blogging about painting. There is nothing sadder than blogging about something that you don't do, like you do do, unless you're getting paid to do that. With the cost of gas and the falling dollar, who can afford to travel either? Which leaves me with only random detritus to fill these pages with. And that's just what the world wants! When I turn 40 I want to do another Ironman. Who is with me? I got 3 years to get back in shape, born again hard Private Pyle. That's a reasonable expectation. I'll do it in another country too. New Zealand? Australia? I'll take a three month leave of absence from work and tour the southern hemisphere. Sail a boat from Sydney to Wellington. Catch some Australian Open. Throw a ring into Mount Doom.

I want to go to Mississippi. I just realized tonight how many giants of American music came from Mississippi. B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, Elvis, Bill. Ok, Bill wasn't a musician, but he could spin a mighty good story. I'm leavin out a bunch of folks too. I'm going down there and I'm going to drink the water. I'll visit old scratch down at the crossroads if I have to.

He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
-William Faulkner, again

I feel like a pretentious ass quoting Faulkner this much tonight. I can hear Constant Reader out there, who does this clown think he is? And I'm with you:

oh yes
There are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.
-bukowski

I think Hank is less pretentious. But I have also called them Bill and Hank. I haven't slept well in 4 days. Let's blame it on that. I'm a pair of ragged claws tonight. Deadliest Catch returns in less than two weeks. One of my favorite shows.

Don't get any big ideas
they're not gonna happen
You paint yourself white
and fill it with noise
but there'll be something missing
-Radiohead

If I had any discretion or an editor I'd stop writing. It is way past a bedtime for someone who should wake up at 5 am. But is there still a nugget hiding on the ocean floor? I envy you people that lay their heads on a pillow and fall fast asleep. If I keep writing, who will fall asleep first, me or you? But I beat on, a boat against the current born to sail for orgastic green lights at the end of the dock. I'd still like a sailboat, but I'm no closer to one. Budget's tight all around these days. Speaking of today, I heard/read two April Fool's stories from a couple of my favorite media outlets and I fell hook line and sinker on both till the end when they reminded me what day it is. My picture is in the dictionary next to fool.

Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot
-W.S.

Super bug

I stumbled across this relatively new band and I am advising you people to check them out. The band is called WSNB and I think they have one album, Jomo Swamp Root Boogie. They are kinda blues, southern rock, from Western North Carolina and they do a cover of a Gillian Welch number so they got some cred.
I have partially recovered from the super bug. It seems to be going around but no one knows what it is. Most are given antibiotics to kill it, but I'm not convinced that helps. It has left me with one ear partially deaf, a continued dry hacking cough, headaches, and general fatigue. If my ear doesn't get better soon, I may start to worry. Ok, I'm already worrying. I can't look at people when they talk to me cause I have to turn my good ear to them. Awkward.

Under the weather

Me and the cat aren't feeling well today.

Raise the flag

Bjork made a statement at the end of her concert in Beijing by singing "Tibet Tibet" at the end of her song Declare Independence. It raised quite a ruckus with the Chinese government and the crowd apparently. My hat's off to her. Let the Dalai Lama back in Lhasa and leave Tibet alone.

Random detritus

Have you ever wondered what will happen when the world runs out of oil? It will happen some day ya know. I always thought of human civilization as one long linear improvement, but when oil is gone, we'll have to go backwards. There's just no way we can move all the stuff we do today without oil. How will airplanes fly? We can't all run electric cars or plant enough crops for biofuels. Will we take sailboats to Europe? Ride horses to work? Or we can all sit at home and virtualize ourselves to work. The highways will be empty. 95 could turn into a great bike trail. When you pump all that oil out, what fills it in?

Time

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
-H. D. Thoreau

I'm not liking this earlier daylight saving. After living without air conditioning for a summer, I'm not sure I like it at all. Arizona doesn't do it because they are smart enough to not want an extra hour of evening heat. It may save on lighting, but not on cooling. Tomorrow morning will be a challenge. Such is life.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.
-Robert Herrick

I cooked a chicken tonight and it took about twice as long as I'd thought and it had a strange texture. How does chicken develop a strange texture? Maybe it was an old bird. But that was a lot of time spent waiting on a dinner that was pretty lousy.

I started another new painting today and finished none.

Time waits for no one.
-The Rolling Stones

Lesson Learned

Before you burn a bridge, make sure you are on the right side of the river.

Government Cheese

So today at work, I get the news that the software I'd requested to be installed would not be installed because it would be hard to configure. We have a whole group of people who are your typical sys admin/IT types that do have a lot of weird things to juggle due to that nature of our work. But this software I want is free, open source, and used everywhere. It is almost as ubiquitous as McDonalds. And I had to jump numerous bureaucratic hurdles and approvals to get to that point, which all cleared breezily, only to be stopped by, "sorry, too much work for us." I have downloaded and installed it on both Mac and Linux at home, and aside from the download time, configuring takes minutes. And I know that the situation is not much different at work. So why would the group whose job it is to manage our computer systems not want to install this software that shouldn't take but an hour to get up and running? This is what baffles me. I have answers I'll keep to myself for now. I had to walk away from the reply button to avoid one of those venomous emails that one usually regrets sending at some point. I'm still struggling with a response that is appropriate and sadly sometimes I want to give up and relax into the fold of apathy that so many seem to have adopted as their only long term job goal. Ranting is not one of my visions for this blog, but sometimes it's good to vent, even if it is to the blogosphere.

Make Art

I watched the Oscars last night, DVRed so as to skip commercials and annoying dance numbers, but one performance stopped me from fast forwarding, those eventual winners of best original song, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. I had never heard of them, but they sounded genuine and were unlikely winners, which seemed to be a dominant theme of the night. Marketa, cut off by the orchestra on her first attempt, came back out and delivered something like:

This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all independent musicians and artists who spend so much of their time struggling. No matter how far out your dreams are, it's possible...this song was written from a perspective of hope, and at the end of the day, hope connects us all.

The song came from their own movie which they shot for 100,000 euros.
Marion Cotillard was another surprise and she looked like she was really going to pass out when she was walking off stage. I felt her joy. And then there was Diablo Cody. I read her book and although she is a talented writer, something about her winning an oscar for original screenplay felt like the girl from down the block just won it. And I felt hope and connection. So let's get out there people and change the world! Vive la vie!

Painting day

I did some more work on Russian Lullaby, but I'm still not happy with it. I may have tackled more than I can handle with this ornate wool blanket. The silver shaker poses challenges as well. Live and learn. I also sketched out a new painting. I may give this one the old Tanner treatment vice the Harris method. There is a photo from the beach that I like up above too. Click on it for a better view.

i Google.

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth - not going all the way and not starting.
- Buddha

Buddha would have made a good software engineer.

It's my first week of serious blogging and I'm wondering where to go with this thing. I'm thinking part travelogue, artlogue, random musings and other detritus. Picture above is from Bill Harris's art class, a little number I like to call bowl of fruit, number one. I have one other painting from that class that is still unfinished. I have a lot of unfinished paintings in the studio. I should take some of my own Buddha quoting medicine?

talk to me machine!
we can drink together.
we can have fun.

think of all the people who will hate me at this computer.
we'll add them to the others
and continue right on.
so this is the beginning
not the
end.

- Charles Bukowski, from 'my first computer poem'

Happy Franklin Pierce Day!

The long weekend at the beach is over. I return to Richmond to discover that the Civil War is not over people. Mortars from the 1860s have been fired in Chesterfield County damaging a home there. Is the South rising?
I decided during the long drive back that I want a sailboat and a vacation home. Donations accepted. Weekend getaways are good for your health. Is this the warmest February ever? My heating bill likes it. But some of me misses winter and snow. I could travel to China. I need to paint something.

Happy Hour

The Red Balloon

Standing on the beach at Corolla with free wifi at my back. Ocean too
cold for bare feet. Sun comes out again and so do the people, dogs,
and fishermen. Almost cocktail/happy hour...