Geo-political Graffiti

I was talking to my father-in-law Ed about the state of politics in Massachusetts. I say this because Massachusetts is a liberal state, and California is a liberal state but the liberalism of both states could not be more different. In Massachusetts, people are really concerned, and I mean really concerned, about their own personal rights. In California, people have realized that personal rights don't really mean anything unless you have the money with which to utilize those rights, and therefore, in California, the real concern is in the money department. You can have all the free speech you want, but unless you have the money to rent bill board space no one will listen to you. What seems to be ironic in this whole thing is that Massachusetts, with all of its complaining, is relatively cheaper than California. Mind you, I lived in Chico, which is cheap by California standards and Massachusetts is still cheaper than that.

So, the average Massachusettsian spends a few minutes out of their day complaining that the government is hiking some fee, and, "how can they just do that, don't we have rights." Whereas the average California, complains about the same thing, but they say, "how dare they ask for more of our money." Which is more effective? Well, the Californians will end up paying the money so the hike is complained about, but eventually accepted. You get the feeling that Massachusetts has enough people who would parade in the streets if given the chance, that though there's a hike in the fee here as well, it's less severe. Just something to think about.

But anyways, I was talking to my F.I.L. Ed about this and I was telling him how in Massachusetts they really don't like Bush. Now, you are entitled to whatever your opinion is on this subject. You may even fall into the category of 'it's not that I like Bush; it's just that I hate democrats,' or so on. I will not bother you. If your support Bush in unconditional and will remain no matter what he says or does then I'm sure that you have enough personal problems and you don't need me needling you as well.

Suffice to say that I don't like Bush. But I don't like Bush in a regular, "okay..I'm not going to vote for the guy," sort of way. People around here react to the upcoming election as if it were an exorcism. It is not uncommon to see cars with 5 or more anti-Bush bumper stickers. Not Hippy cars. Normal, "this is my car" type cars--covered in bumper stickers.

My favorite is "Let's not vote for him again in 04." I think it is a tribute to democracy that the one leader who rose to power without winning the election is the only one who's policies resemble the Shaw of Iran. See what happens when democracy fails: Quasi-theocratic Military dictatorship complete with secret police. But, I digress...that's beside the point.

The point is that I'm not voting for him, and by doing that, I do believe I will have voiced my opinion on the matter. On the other hand, there are those who feel that their voice will not be heard unless they paint it on the side of buildings and especially on Stop signs. Nearly every Stop sign in the Pioneer Valley has the word "Bush" appended to it. So that, while driving around, all you see are Stop Bush signs.

So, I told Ed about this, and he said something that really interested me. He said, "isn't it funny how political graffiti is always supporting the democratic party." Well, I've given it some thought, and I'd like to explain why this is. First of all, the democrats are the party for public projects--projects such as cleaning up graffiti. Now, keep in mind, without graffiti, there is no reason to fund a committee to clean up the graffiti. You cannot ask tax payers to clean up the streets when the streets are already clean. It's like asking the state to fund a clinic for anorexia in Ethiopia.

I don't imagine that the authors of the graffiti itself think of this. More than likely, being democrats, they simply assume that some tax-funded organization will come along and clean up their mess in the same way that they assume a welfare system will come along to fix their lives. I'm sure that will offend somebody, but I guarantee that if you have worked a shit job at any point in your life, you will have little or no sympathy for people who do nothing and still receive a check which is, more often than not, more than you make.

Of course, the authors of the graffiti might simply assume that they have to make anonymous character assassinations of the president because public character assassinations generally result in your being put on a list in the department of homeland security's home office--say if they were to write a blog about their political feelings or something like that.

But the real reason, I think that Republicans do not write political graffiti on the wall is because that venue of communication is closed to them. The right wingers botched that up for their future conservatives in Berlin around 1935. Now they have to go to more subtle tactics--like paying people to blatantly and slanderously lie about the republican's competition.

I for one believe the TV ads made by Kerry's ex-fellow soldiers. I believe that they, out of nowhere, decided to get a butt load of money together, by themselves and with no affiliation to the Republican party, in order to tell the whole world about how Kerry smoozed his way into getting his three purple hearts. Moreover, I believe that Kerry, way back in the early seventies, knew that in thirty years he would be married to the ketchup queen, and would thereby be able to fund a presidential race in 2004, and as a result of this knowledge, knew that he would only get an edge over the competition by getting three purple hearts in a war that the president was too coked up during to remember, and all this three decades before the actual presidential race. Hell, that's why I'm voting for Kerry. What foresight!

Look, I'll be honest with you people. I'm no democrat. Nor am I a republican. I'm just voting for the guy who'll do the best by me. It's as simple as that. I suggest you all do the same. If you have money invested in a company over seas and you're afraid that your factory will be burned down in protest to Bush's foreign policy, vote Kerry. If you have children who you do not want to see go off to war, vote Kerry. If you are a teacher or a student at any level, vote Kerry. If you are doing well now, though, by all means vote Bush. What I can't stand are people who vote Bush because he's a republican and they're republicans. He's a Christian and they're Christians. He doesn't like terrorists, and they don't like terrorists. That's just not good enough anymore as a criteria. Sorry. First of all, no one likes terrorists. Second, Bush is as much a Christian as Jerry Falwell. Hell, in one speech I saw him mis-quoting the Bible to attribute the power of Jesus to the power of the U.S.. Something wrong there. Lastly, is George Bush a republican? Hell, there are only two parties with any clout in the U.S., he just picked the rightist wing.

The real truth is that Bush is the candidate of the wealthy. Therefore, if you are wealthy, you most certainly should vote Bush, and I hold no grudge against you for it. You will most certainly get a better tax break with Bush than you would with Kerry. Just remember though that tax break isn't the same as you got with Reagan or Bush, Sr.. This time around that coupon comes at the expense of America's name world-wide. Oh yeah, and it has blood on it.

To Live and Smog in MA

Yesterday, Lynn determined that she would have some time before going into Cold Stone Creamery, and as there are a number of things that we need to set up together, we figured we might opt for one of those. My choice was, of course, for the joint checking account because on the pyramid of needs, money comes in pretty high. Furthermore, there are no Wells Fargo banks in Northampton, or in all of Massachusetts for that matter, and so the ability to replenish the magical resevoir of money which supplies my ATM card is, here, impossible. This coupled with a number of student loans, the phone bill for the old place, the phone number for the new place, PG and E, Eastern Gas and Electric, Garbage, and two cable bills was tending to make my checkbook only the slightest bit rubbery.

Lynn vetoed my idea for the bank thing in favor of automobile insurance. My hope was that it was not a full scale veto, but rather a setting of precedents--her thing then mine. But alas, this was not to be the case.

Unbeknownst to either Lynn or I, Massachusetts does not believe in simply walking into a place that claims to be able to perform the service advertised on their sign and getting said service. There are things which the state wants you to do here in Massachusetts, and performing any one of those tasks inevitably must mean performing all of those tasks. Let me also point out that the insurance which I had out in California was no good. Evidently, there is nation wide, except for Massachusetts, insurance coverage and Massachusetts coverage which is regulated by the state. This is, of course, to help people from having to shop around for the "best" price on their auto insurance. There is only one price here--roughly double what I paid out in California.

Wait, there's more. You would have assumed that the hour that Lynn had to purchase auto insurance would have been enough time to perform said task. You would have assumed wrong. Once the hour was up, there was still more to do, oh much more to do, before we could consider ourselves insured, all of which was put on a time table that could only be completed by the unemployed.

A brief run down of the checklist looks something like this:

1. In order for the insurance to kick in the car must be registered in the state of Massachusetts ($90) and must be photographed by a registered vehicle collision inspector--you have five days to perform this operation.
2. In order to register your car in the state of Massachusetts, you must have insurance pending, a Massachusetts state drivers license ($90), and pass an emissions and safety test ($29). You have seven days to perform this operation.
3. In order to get a Massachusetts state drivers license, you must have a DL from another state, a social security card, and proof of residency. I've bolded the last one, because it is of course this detail that you will inevitably not know to bring, and so you will have to go home, get your lease, and drive back to the RMV (not DMV) where you will have to, once again, wait in line. You have twenty days from the time of your residency to procure a Massachusetts state drivers license.
4. The Vehicle Collisions Inspector requires very little in way of monetary compensation to take snap shots of your car, but they are not always open. You must check the times for this one. Also importantly, VCI's do not work at places where they do emissions checks. It is impossible to kill two birds with one stone on this one.
5. Lastly, the emissions guy really doesn't need much besides your money and your registration.

So, given that I will be training to be a teacher all next week and Lynn will be opening the ice cream parlor. I had yesterday and today to get all of this done. Luckily, I do not currently have a job. But needless to say, I've been running all over the frickin' place both days. Two trips to the RMV is enough to kill anyone, and as you can probably tell from the details provided above, it was finally necessary for us to open a bank account in order for me to continue with the titillating job of making it legal for me to drive in this state.

I have only, now, finally completed the last stage in this process, the emissions and safety test, and it is that experience, fresh in my memory, that I would like to share with you. I'm going to call the emission's guy Doug, because he had the same crappy comb over as a guy I used to know named Doug. Don't let that paint a bad image, Doug was an okay guy.

Okay, first of all, in finding Doug I stopped by three places which claimed to be able to perform the emissions test, but being that it was 12:45, nobody was at any of them, and when I say nobody, I mean nobody. Nobody was at the front desk. Nobody was in the shop. At one point I got Stephen King kind of ideas like, maybe there was a giant rabid dog waiting to chase me back to my car and sit on my hood, but there wasn't even that, so on I drove, until I found Doug's shop. There was a kid working at Doug's, so at least there I got an answer. "Lunch hour. Come back at 2:00." So, I came back at two.

At two, I found Doug busy smogging a mini-van, but unlike mechanics that you and I are used to, mechanics who take your keys and your phone number and call you when they are done, Doug accepted the woman owner of the mini-van and her child in the shop, tolerated their continuous presence as he performed various checks on their car. Being unaware of how things are done around here, I thought, 'why don't these people just leave him alone and let him do his job.' So, I'm standing in the doorway and Doug asks me what I need and I tell him that I need an emissions check and I ask him how long it will be, and he tells me forty minutes, and I ask if I should just leave the keys in the car and he says, "what fer?" "What fer?" It is at this point that my mind sort of seizes upon the idea that something is different, really different. What mechanic asks you why you are leaving him the keys? What mechanic doesn't know the answer to that question.

So, I replied, "well, you don't expect me to wait here for forty minutes." But it was clear that he did, even though I didn't. I left the keys in the car and went across the street to get some lunch at a Chinese food place. A digression for a moment--in California, the Chinese menu normally has beef, chicken, and pork on the same line, and shrimp on another (thus, Kung Pao chicken, beef, or pork is one price, and kung pao shrimp another, slightly higher, price). In Massachusetts Kung Pao beef, chicken, pork, shrimp, or scallops are all the same price. Back to Doug.

When I returned from lunch, there were five cars waiting after mine. Doug was filling my windshield-wiper fluid. "Wouldn't want to fail because you were out of wiper fluid." Fail an emissions test? Because of wiper fluid? "Uh huh," I replied in confused gratitude. I felt like the first time you learn about algebra and you think, 'yeah I'm pretty good at math. 7x8=56.' And your teacher says, "yes, well very good. Now, what if 7x=15y," and you realize that what you're calling math and what he's calling math are not the same thing.

I began to wonder what criteria of status check fell into the emissions and safety check category. Would I fail for having too much change in my seats. Would the fact that only four of my radio channels had been pre-programmed factor in my passing or failing. I could imagine Doug coming back and saying, "you're supposed to have an even number of butts in your ash tray:0, 2, 4, 8. You have seven. That won't do."

Anyways, Doug checks my tire pressure, my mirror angle, my chakras. He claps twice and then throws a ball at me--real fast like. He starts speaking backwards and records my reactions. He asks me what 7 times 8 is. Finally, he hooks my car up to a computer.

Now, all of this is taking some time, and behind me are the other five cars, and like the lady before me, they are not taking off for lunch. They will not be showing up just at the end to pay the man. They clearly know something that I do not. But it's hot and so they are all standing outside their cars, and as I am in there with Doug, they are glaring at me because I am in their way. The guy in the back looks like he's almost in tears. The woman who is next in line comes into the shop to see what's taking so long. She's not asking Doug. She's asking me.

Now the computer that Doug has hooked up to my car is not working. It gets about 75% of its readings and then stops, waits a couple minutes, and then retries. There is no way around this part of the emissions test. I offer to do jumping jacks. Doug looks at me and says, "the time when that might have made a difference is over." And for serious, I am not kidding here, he looks over at me and says, in this really accusatory voice, "You're car is not giving the computer the information that it needs," like this is somehow my fault. And hearing his tone, the woman behind him starts glaring at me even harder, now joined by a few other people who are waiting in line.

Doug says, "Oh, this is taking too long." And then, "I'd hate to fail you for how long this is taking." I am not frickin' kidding you. Somehow, whatever is wrong was my fault, like it were some kind of malicious prank that I was playing on the guy. Like I'd shit in the gas tank, just to see Doug's face when he figured out what was going wrong.

I try to apologize, but I'm not sure what I'm apologizing for, and I say, "well, what's wrong." Doug says, "well, it's stuck." Yeah, no shit it's stuck. But why? There is no specificity in Doug's answer. It's stuck. It's stopped. It's not getting any of the answers it needs. And every time he says this it's more my fault...and every time he says this, its one more step that I am going to have to do next week, after I get home from an all day teacher training, to get my car smogged by the deadline of next Thursday.

And then out of nowhere, Doug says, "this always happens with cars after 1995." Wha-wha-what? What the hell? So, the problem here is that my car isn't ten years old. The woman, now the leader of the line that is waiting for me to get out of the way, is still glaring at me. Doug asks her what year her car is. She says, "1999." So, real loud so that the crowd can hear me, I say to Doug, "So, you'll probably have trouble with her car too, huh?" and he answers, "yeah," and then he gives her a sigh which he has, up until now, reserved only for the problems related to my car. Then he says, "there's only one more thing I know to do," and he gets in my car.

While Doug is delivering the coup de grace to this test in regards to my vehicle, I shout across the garage to the woman, "how come you guys are waiting here in this heat? I went across the street and had lunch." Having realized that she will soon be the object of scorn from the people waiting in line behind her by virtue of her car's newness, she is diffused and seemingly friendly again. So she answers back, "if you leave, he just closes up shop." How's that for a work ethic. Can you imagine dropping off your car to be looked at and having the mechanic close up the shop because you didn't stay all day to keep him company while he's working on your car.

The end of this story is a happy one. The one last thing that Doug tried on my car worked. What was that last thing, you may ask? What was this jury rigging of the system that allowed Doug to circumvent tens of thousands of dollars of computerized checks and balances which my car had failed to interface with? What was this special technique that Doug was willing to employ, sticking his neck out for me as my last salvation before having to come back to try to pass my smog test again? Well, Doug put a muzzle on my exhaust, got into my car, pulled it forward two feet onto a set of wheels, and pressed the gas for about twenty seconds. I resisted the urge to yell, "yeah, you stick it to the man Doug. Those bureaucratic monkeys down at the RMV have no idea who they're fucking with," and instead agreed with Doug that it sure was a close one as I took off in my fully functioning vehicle.

Ars Blogica

Avram Hooknoobie, aka Kyle, applauded (I think) my work on this blog--saying, in effect, that a writer writes. It is an old adage. Perhaps you've heard it before, but perhaps not. But it's true, a writer does write. In fact, this can be used two ways. If you're writing (Jason) then you are a writer. If you are not writing then...well, maybe you should re-think your job description. I mention Jason, of course, because he writes constantly and never lets anyone see any of his work--the same held true for the bastard's master's thesis as well as the short stories, or whatever they are, that he produces, I can only imagine, at a flurry that would make this paltry blog look...well, paltry I suppose. If you know Jason, you know that you'd probably want to read his work. His fiction 59's were incredible (and disturbing). I have seen one or two pieces from him and can tell you with all certainty that he is gifted, talented, and worthy of the jealousy that I have for him. And though I want him dead, I also want to read his stuff. Aye, there's the rub.

From my own point of view, I have recently not been a writer. A few things here, a few things there, but nothing really of note. This is a major problem when you're working on a novel, which I am. It is an even worse problem when you are nearly two hundred single spaced pages into your novel and you feel that you've run out of steam, which I do. And the problem in a nut shell is that I have not been a writer. I have not written.

Oh to be sure, my character, Death Monkey, in Baldur's Gate II kicks major butt, and my Eldar army is almost nearly painted, but when all is said and done there is no great reward for the well painted army, nor shouts of hurrah from the general public when I tell them that my character now possesses both the staff of themagi and the ring of Gaxx. But a big fat book on the shelf of Barnes and Nobel...well, that's another story indeed.

One may, of course, mention that I have a master's thesis under my belt as well, and that such a tome pretty much represents a book, but it's really not the same thing. And though I am proud of the effort I put into my thesis, I am less enthusiastic about the output. It is as incomplete as my novel in many respects, and requires far more editing than the novel on the work that is already there.

So, there it is--file Fullshock4n taking up 658 kb of my computer's space, day in, day out. Waiting for me to write another sentance or paragraph. But unfortunately, it would take a writer to finish the book, and as I mentioned before, I have not been a writer--recently, at least.

When Kyle says, "aha, I see what you're doing. You're writing. You're being a writer." He's absolutely right. And when he says, "I know why you're doing that." Well, he's right about that as well. He's officially hit the nail on the head.

See, before you say, "but that's absurd. You are a writer, now get to writing," realize that I'm not so far out there as you might believe. One of the greatest problems with thinking of yourself as a writer is that other writers have come before you. I mean yeah, sure, you can read Tom Clancey and say, "well, I can surely write as well as this guy," but that's a fallacy. With Clancy it isn't skill that's the issue--it's speed. To put it quite simply, I stopped writing poetry once I read Rilke, Stevens, and Vallejo. I mean, it's easy to say you're a poet when you've only read the lesser people, but the real poets, I mean the real poets, they're hard to contend with.

I have no problems like this with fiction--novels and short stories--because, there, I've read the real master's, and while I'm not always on their level, at times I am. The problem is that when you hear these guys biographies, you realize that they're habits are nothing like yours. I'm not talking about the socializing and the drinking and the opium smoking or any of that stuff. Some writers were crazy party animals. Others never made it out of their homes. The thing about all these writers is that they wrote, they wrote constantly. Ray Bradbury says that he writes a story a day. I'm lucky if I get a story a season--lately, a year.

I'd love to say that it was working at the woodshop that kept me from really getting into the story writing mood, but heh, Wallace Stevens was an insurance underwriter and he managed to write Sunday Morning. So, a writer writes, and here I am writing. I'm trying to write some everyday, trying to knock the dust off the Shock Tea machine, and I think...well, I think this may just be working.

The other side of this is, of course, that Jason will see the ammount that I write in a day and proceed as if it were the norm, forcing him to double his output which he will show to no one, until he produces a real gem, which he'll show to me, forcing me to curse his talent even more, and move my own writing up to a higher gear. Hey Jason, what was the name of Mozart's rival in Amadeus? Kyle, Lynn, the same goes for you too.

And, of course, I wouldn't be telling the whole story if I didn't include you, the audience, the readership, the people who actually make it through my long winded entries. It's strange because I have been pretty much writing under the assumption that no one was reading this thing. I just figured I was writing as a sort of journal. Still, it would've been nice to have an audience. Then I started to receive e-mails from various friends who said they are reading my blog. While this should have meant that I now had reason to write, and therefore, would write more, it has had a strange side effect. I wrote two blogs yesterday, for instance, and didn't put them up because I didn't figure they were in keeping with the spirit of this thing. Hell, this blog really isn't in keeping either, to tell the truth, but whatever. Next time, I'll be more ammusing. I promise.

Our house, roughly in the middle of our street

So here are the pictures. This is the side view of the house. Note the excessive number of windows. Also note that we do not have a fireplace, though we do have a chimney.

This is our back forty. Very green. See that blue sky. That's rare for around here.

Here we have the front stair case. Note the exquisite wood work and the 90 degree turn.

And this is our back staircase and its excorcist degree slope.

This is our kitchen. In Chico, it would have been impossible to have taken this picture with less than three people in the kitchen. Erik, you know what I'm talking about. But look, you could probably actually fit three people in this kitchen. It's pretty big.



This is our dining room. It is currently a complete mess.

More of the dining room. Look at all the frickin' windows.

Again with the windows. Here we have our living room set up. The lack of a couch is sort of depressing, I think we'll all agree.



Lynn's room. Needs some work.

My room. Need's less work.

Holy voluminous vault, batman. Look at our attic. We're still trying to figure out what to do with. As of right now, it's being used as Max's track. We like to keep our cat in shape so that he can run marathons. Unfortunately, he mostly runs at night.
The attic itself is bigger than our living room. The only problem is that it doesn't have any heat or air conditioning. It's not exactly hot, or at least not much worse than downstairs, but Winter's here get pretty cold. In any case, Lynn has it zoned for yoga, and I, of course, am planning on using it as the war room. That pile of boxes on the left represents my War 40k collection.

This is the side view of our attic. Note the futon. This room could be yours should you decide to visit.

So, anyways, that's our happy home. Now, come visit.