Life During Wartime

Sometimes I feel a bit under siege. There is the ever present War On [specified evil] and "we the people" AKA The Government of The United States seem to be at "war" with a lot of stuff.

War on Drugs - great big success so far. Almost nobody takes drugs and the harsh penalties have essentially prevented any further "drug crimes" through deterrence. Yeah, right. More like billions of dollars wasted trying to prevent people from getting high. The prohibition drives up the street price of the illicit goods to the maximum that will be borne by the users, and almost all of that money is spent on other, more harmful illegal activities. Meanwhile, we have one in 100 citizens behind bars, and one in NINE are black men. About half of these people are non-violent offenders, many of them incarcerated for drugs. We spend about 55 BILLION dollars a year on prisons. Nice work. Think this will change any time soon? Me neither.

War on "piracy". It used to be the case that copyright lasted for 14 years, with one 14 year renewal. Period.

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" was the first stated purpose of U.S. copyright. The U.S. Constitution ratified in 1788 proposed to do that "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The first U.S. copyright law, passed in 1790, protected books, maps, and charts if they were created by residents or citizens of the United States. The term of their exclusive right was a mere 14 years, with the right of renewal for 14 more.

Now Big MEdia interests have perverted this into essentially PERMANENT OWNERSHIP rights (life of the original author plus 70 - 90 years) and have waged a years long war against their potential (and actual) customers to get them to PAY UP and pay restitution for their crimes of piracy and theft of property. Then they got lawmakers to take away rights from the public to unconstitutionally enrich private individuals. That's fucked up.

In my view, if it was created more than 28 years ago - it should be public domain. Period. Content creators, if they want to make a living, should continue to create valuable things and sell them under copyright. I certainly don't continue to get paid for work I did more than 28 years ago. Do you?

War on Terror
No end in sight for this one, thanks to Bush and Company's work. We'll continue to have invasive body and bag screening by low IQ TSA goons FOREVER as far as I can tell. It makes me ill how much effort is wasted and how much fear is generated by this one insane reaction. JUST LOCK THE DAMN COCKPIT like a timed safe. (Actually, I think it would be better if we were to place a bulkhead there instead of a door and make the cockpit accessible only from OUTSIDE the plane.) If some suicide bomber blows up a plane with explosives hidden in the bottle of the baby he is strolling aboard, that will be a huge tragedy but it will still be only a fraction of the 576 people killed that week in car crashes. Spend the rest of the money finding and killing actual terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan where they are hiding.

Don't even get me started on all the domestic surveillance crap. (We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that aint allowed.)

In which I flash my stash

Got wood?

I know it kind of looks like bacon, but it's actually walnut. There was this little walnut tree back by the pool. After we took out the weedy plum tree (which dropped sour plums all summer onto the pool deck) there was the saddest walnut tree evar which leaned to the left about 45 degrees. Since the walnut trees are alleopathic we wanted it gone. So I cut it down.

Since the trunk was about five inches across, I decided to saw it up into some bits to make "something" out of. I have about eight pieces about an inch thick and about two to three inches across. I suppose I need to figure out what to make now.

There is enough to re-saw up into thin pieces so I could glue up a panel big enough for a serving tray. Maybe I'll serve walnuts on it.

And the doors are coming along nicely if a little slowly. Every day I try to make a bit of progress. All the hardware is there, the doors are painted, and the wall is nearly ready for priming. The picture below doesn't show the drywall compound.
One thing is that the adjacent wall (to the right) is going to get demo'd in the kitchen project, and I'm not finishing that edge. One of my gentle (and attractive) readers was by the other day and asked, "Are you really going to remodel the kitchen? You have been talking about that FOREVER."

Yeah. You got me there.

OK, a poem for my loyal readers

safe

in something we trust
our safety assured by something all powerful
our illusion after all

as we come we go
as ourselves
by ourselves

our leaving occasions a reflection
on our life
on our illusion
on ourselves

safely passed
we are only now
truly safe

If I write it, they will come

I don't mean it in that sense, of course.

But I was wondering what does it mean that I am writing about one post a week.
Too busy?
Disrespecting you loyal fans?
Nothing pithy on my mind?

I'll go with, I was working on finishing up those doors. They are painted on the inside and primed on the outside. The plan is to have the house painted sometime soon before monsoon season and we're just priming the new stuff for that. The other thing to do is to replace the kitchen window similarly so we can finish the outside and get it ready for paint. We should also replace that siding too and remove the window on the back porch that is mostly covered by cabinets. I think it will be just about the end of the year before all that comes to pass... Houses are a lot of work. I suppose I could PAY someone to get it all done, but that would break a lot of longstanding habits.

Oh and the wall is now insulated!!! Hooray! Tonight we dance - tomorrow we hang sheetrock!

Subject change:
When I started writing all of this nonsense it was because I was trying to be hip, because I sensed that there was a great big interwebs world I was missing out on and that I was just a noob. I quickly came to depend on it as an outlet for creative thoughts, for ranting a little, for telling a joke or two, and for relaying news of my latest "adventures" like building stuff.

I got a little carried away in the beginning. Now I think, sometimes, that I'm phoning it in now and again. But when the thought crosses my mind to hang it up, I hear Ricky Ricardo in the distance, "Bob! You got some splainin to do!"

So I'll keep coming back here and writing "it". I just need you all to keep coming back to read it too, OK?

Tahoe, Baby

So we took off Friday for our home away from home, Lake Tahoe. Every year when we come up here something is disappointing, sometimes the disappointments are crushing. Not this year. The worst that has happened so far is that we didn't have bar soap. That got taken care of.

The cabin is great, the view is awesome, and we have four bedrooms to spread out into. The picture above is the lake about 150 feet from the front door.

See you all on Monday!

More of the same

Well, despite having no pictures to show for it, I have made more, and I might add STUNNING progress on El Puerta Grande. There is now exterior trim - and we all know how important trim is. There was lots of little fiddly patching with wood filler and the ever delightful sanding. So from the outside it looks like unpainted doors in a primed frame.

But I digress.

So yesterday we went to San Jose (leaving the house was scary, but we had a map) for Aunt Mary's memorial. There were lots of hankies at the service and about 200 people there in the church. After the service we all headed over to Mary's house a few blocks away. What can I say, it was a time where you are happy to see all of your relatives, and you all say that you are there to celebrate your lost love one's life, but deep down it really reminds you that she is gone.

My older blood relatives are down to less than a handful. Mom's still there, one last aunt and two uncles. Unless something really unusual happens, I'll be attending their memorials too someday. Eventually (in twenty or forty years) all the fresh faced kids that were there yesterday will attend something to remember me. Only it won't be in a church. And I better come up with some behaviors that they'll remember as endearing or it will be a very short memorial.

And how about those funny political candidates? I'm voting for the guy with the stick-out ears. I sure hope enough people in those other states do to.

I haven't written any poems in a while. That's good for me since I only wrote them when I was depressed, but bad for you 'cause I write such awesome poems. Maybe next time.

El Puerta Grande

Yeah, so the doors... They look like this now.


Not surprisingly it was a lot of work to get this far:
Get some doors, door framing and a bunch of hardware - check
Demolish existing plaster wall without making a mess of the rest of the house - check
Demolish existing frame - check
Go to dump - check
Go to Home Desperate and get more framing stuff - check
Calculate and triple check all the numbers for how it will all fit - check check check
New framing and flashing - check
Build a threshold from a plank of oak - check
Modify door frame components - check
Make hinge mortising jig - check
Mortise door frames for hinges - check
Install door frame perfectly centered plumb and level and stuff - check
Install threshold - check
Set up doors for mortising
Discover matched doors are not really a matched pair after all
Return to Home Despot and return doors
Get new doors and some insulation too
Bring doors home and mortise them for hinges
Hang up doors

I was absolutely thrilled and relieved that the doors fit as well as they did.

Now all we need is exterior trim
Painting in and outside
Install the insulation and replace the wiring in that wall
Finish the wall with sheet rock, paint trim, etc etc.