"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

The Devil Must Be Testing Me

Bike wheel stolen.

2006 has a high energy of activation it seems.

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I Preach A Dark Future

This could become a new blog category...

clicky clicky

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Down and Up

Well, I found my copy of that fax I sent to Oregon, so I have a photocopy of my license. This may be enough to get a passport. With a passport I can get a new license. I'll find out more tomorrow when I try to deal with the passport people at the local PO.

And I've got half a flu. I sort of felt it coming on yesterday so I got to bed early and have been dosing myself with vitimins and echinaechia and wearing a scarf and hat. A rather inauspicious beginning to 2006.

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I'm a WOP

Identity is a bitch. I was just about to apply for a new passport (my old one was lost in a move a while back) to travel to Vancouver BC next month, and discovered that sometime in the past few weeks I lost my drivers license. The last time I know I had it for sure was when I faxed a copy to Oregon to get a copy of my birth cirtificate for the passport application. Now it's gone. I never need it, so I'm not sure when or where it was lost. I'll ransack my room tonight, but I have a bad feeling that it's gone.

I can't get the passport without the drivers licence. To get a new drivers licence I need "six points" of identification, of which I have one. Apparently I am joining the ranks of uncodumented American citizens. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Actually, this is sort of serious. I cannot travel by airplane or drive a car without having my papers in order. One more reason to retire to the State of Jefferson.

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Acid Dreams

Burroughs was never into drugs simply for a good time. Despite his psilocyben bummer he agreed to go to Cambridge to participate in further experiments in consciousness alteration. Burroughs looked forward to working with sensory deprivation and submersion tanks, stroboscopes, machines to measure brain waves, and all the technologies and wonders that a prestigous university could supply. But his hopes were dashed as soon as he arrived at Harvard. All he found was a semiperminant cocktail party with a bunch of starry-eyed intellectuals talking some half-assed jive about brotherly love.

From Acid Dreams, which is a cracking good book.

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Happy New Year

New years party was good! The first thing our hostess said to me when I got there was "You cannot smoke pot in my apartment." The last thing was asking me to steal someone's girlfriend. At least that last bit was half-jokingly proposed, but still. Perhaps I should attend to my reputation a bit more in the New Year. Perhaps I should just run with it. That seems more likely.

Also, though I've read several books that explain -- both mathematically and sociologically -- why things like this happen, it still weirds me out when people in my extended social network, who I've never met before, knows and works with other people (on other coasts and continents even) that I also know and work with. It makes me feel more disconnected with the world, actually. Swimming in my own fishbowl.

And it makes me nervous when people say, "very well said," to things that I say. I mean, I like it, but that's what makes me nervous.

Finally, the Bulgarian bar just isn't what it used to be. Or maybe it's not quite as cool at 1am on Jan 1st as on a random summer friday. At any rate, there wasn't quite the dancing scene I was hoping for. Should have stayed at the party. C'est la vie. Still a good night in all.

I can't wait for this war to be over; can't wait for things to change. We're getting there. It's going to happen. Going to be a while yet I think, but overall I'm cautiously optimistic about the new year and the 21st Century in general. I still expect near-catastrophic upheval to roil the globe, but I generally think I'll do ok for myself.

It's the year of dropping the hammer, a year to start building. I have project plans in the works, business plans, creative plans, etc. Thinking about trying to make something immenseley popular or visible. It's time I started putting my skill-blend to use. I don't want to be building websites for other people for the rest of my life.

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Merry Christmas Weekend

wreath

Well, I'm going to take the weekend off. Lucas and I are gonna watch some college football. I'm gonna explore Prospect Park. Maybe I'll even eat some ham. I hope you and yours are warm and happy.

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Gillard on TWU Strike

UPDATE: Good op-ed from the Daily News, who's front-page was a total sham today.

Steve Gillard, two-fisted as they come, has a lot of interesting postings around the transit strike. The most recent one about inter-union politics between the TWU local and international casts a very different light on the whole "their parent union thinks its a fair deal" idea:

Toussaint won election by campaigning against the old guard which was personified by former TWU Local 100 president Sonny Hall who had gone on to head the national union. Toussaint decisively beat a Hall-backed candidate, claiming that the union had squandered both its finances and its clout by playing footsy with transit managers. Once in office, he sliced his own salary by $15,000. His slate of dissidents made similar cuts in their pay. He eliminated an extra pension that local officers had awarded themselves, and also dropped an expensive health plan for officers, putting them on the same plan as members...

In 2002, during the last round of contentious talks between the local and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Toussaint and his allies were haunted by the possibility that should they strike, they faced not just the legal sanctions by the state and the city, but the likelihood that Hall would place the local under trusteeship, firing the elected leaders.

The endorsement of the MTA's offer comes from Hall, who was apparently a prime example of a bad union leader: in bed with managment and lining up all sorts of perks for himself over and above what he got for workers. Reminds me of when Homer got to be the union boss of the power plant.

Homer: What's it pay?

Lenny: Nothin'... unless you're crooked.

Homer: Woohooo!

Also note that my own stuff in the lengthy below is just my analysis, or better yet my own sepctulation. I don't have any experience or connections with the TWU, and what I'm talking about is all based on my observations of other labor disputes. Steve's blog has a lot more news coverage.

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If All Goes Wrong

If it all goes wrong, the State of Jefferson is the official back-up plan. If that proves infeasible, New Zeland.

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Gods Be Praised!

It's 46 degrees. All hail Apollo, or something like that. Huzzah for nuclear fusion.

And now I've got to get back to work.

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