the first day of spring

 

The First Day of Spring. Left, New York [photo by Nancy Bilyeau] || Right, Austin [photo by Max Adams]

 

 

Whoah! Joe Reiter just posted Boston. Holy crap, Boston is about to be attacked by White Walkers.

 
 

conversations with the dean

go read this

 

:::THIS::: is important.

[Yes, that was a link.]

 

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WTF? Still here? Oh you lazy ass slackers!

Fine. You need convincing.

[So sad.]

Here is an excerpt:

 

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To hell with you.

To hell with every greedhead operator who flocked here throughout history because you wanted what we had, but wanted us to go underground and get it for you. To hell with you for offering above-average wages in a place filled with workers who’d never had a decent shot at employment or education, and then treating the people you found here like just another material resource—suitable for exploiting and using up, and discarding when they’d outlived their usefulness. To hell with you for rigging the game so that those wages were paid in currency that was worthless everywhere but at the company store, so that all you did was let the workers hold it for a while, before they went into debt they couldn’t get out of.

To hell with you all for continuing, as coal became chemical, to exploit the lax, poorly-enforced safety regulations here, so that you could do your business in the cheapest manner possible by shortcutting the health and quality of life not only of your workers, but of everybody who lives here. To hell with every operator who ever referred to West Virginians as “our neighbors.”

To hell with every single screwjob elected official and politico under whose watch it all went on, who helped write those lax regulations and then turned away when even those weren’t followed. To hell with you all, who were supposed to be stewards of the public interest, and who sold us out for money, for political power. To hell with every one of you who decided that making life convenient for business meant making life dangerous for us. To hell with you for making us the eggs you had to break in order to make breakfast.

To hell with everyone who ever asked me how I could stand to live in a place like this, so dirty and unhealthy and uneducated. To hell with everyone who ever asked me why people don’t just leave, don’t just quit (and go to one of the other thousand jobs I suppose you imagine are widely available here), like it never occurred to us, like if only we dumb hilljacks would listen as you explained the safety hazards, we’d all suddenly recognize something that hadn’t been on our radar until now.

To hell with the superior attitude one so often encounters in these conversations, and usually from people who have no idea about the complexity and the long history at work in it. To hell with the person I met during my PhD work who, within ten seconds of finding out I was from West Virginia, congratulated me on being able to read. (Stranger, wherever you are today, please know this: Standing in that room full of people, three feet away from you while you smiled at your joke, I very nearly lost control over every civil checkpoint in my body. And though civility was plainly not your native tongue, I did what we have done for generations where I come from, when faced with rude stupidity: I tamped down my first response, and I managed to restrain myself from behaving in a way that would have required a deep cleaning and medical sterilization of the carpet. I did not do any of the things I wanted to. But stranger, please know how badly I wanted to do them.)

And, as long as I’m roundhouse damning everyone, and since my own relatives worked in the coal mines and I can therefore play the Family Card, the one that trumps everything around here: To hell with all of my fellow West Virginians who bought so deeply into the idea of avoidable personal risk and constant sacrifice as an honorable condition under which to live, that they turned that condition into a culture of perverted, twisted pride and self-righteousness, to be celebrated and defended against outsiders. To hell with that insular, xenophobic pathology. To hell with everyone whose only take-away from every story about every explosion, every leak, every mine collapse, is some vague and idiotic vanity in the continued endurance of West Virginians under adverse, sometimes killing circumstances. To hell with everyone everywhere who ever mistook suffering for honor, and who ever taught that to their kids. There’s nothing honorable about suffering. Nothing.

 

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Now :::GO FUCKING READ IT:::

 

being cassandra is getting old

 

There’s a big internet scare —

About Los Angeles being the next big 9-11 hit.

Tomorrow.

November 15th.

 

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It’s kind of stupid. I’m not sure why anyone would follow up, say, I dunno, on a 2001 September attack in 20013 in November on a completely different day. Really? 12 years later? In a different month on a different day. Not that that is just bad marketing follow through. But, ultimately, completely stupid. Nobody waits 12 years to follow up. You are probably safe, Los Angeles. Unless your government wants to fuck with you. I’m pretty sure no terrorists are this marketing impaired. But the government? Pretty sure it is.

 

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The internet warning says warnings are going out from Anonymous. People are talking. On one hand saying Anonymous is full of crap. On another hand saying, This is some government conspiracy to put info out there under the Anonymous handle to discredit Anonymous. And then there is the third hand, (nice to have three hands, right?), If Anonymous did just uncover and make public a 9-11 type attack, the fastest way to discredit Anonymous would be to just not do the attack.

 

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Sucks to be you, Los Angeles, in the cross fire, in this discussion. Since, if you live in Los Angeles, this is not exactly an intellectual discussion, it is a question of whether or not you are going to get blown up tomorrow going into work.

 

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I wonder sometimes how all of this turned into an “intellectual discussion.”

 

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It’s not an intellectual discussion for me. I was born in Los Angeles. So were my parents. So were some of my grandparents. You’re not talking about, Oh I just happened to be there, when you talk about blowing up Los Angeles to me. You’re talking about blowing up my grandparents’ headstones.

Fuck you.

 

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What people are not saying —

Los Angeles has already been hit. It is an insidious hit, but it’s a hit. Japan blew up and is spewing radioactivity into the Pacific and the airstream that is hitting the West Coast of the U.S., every day, and there’s a dog pile of radioactive flotsam from the Japan tsunami wake washing up all along the West Coast.

 

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No one’s even talking about that effect on Hawaii, which was in the direct path of the first wash, but people at some point will have to start talking when thousands of pounds of radioactive flotsam hits shores from Baja to Seattle.

Also you have to consider the Hudson Current, which runs north to south from Alaska to Mexico unless there is an El Nino in effect, and then runs backwards, from Mexico to Alaska. Which means even places that shouldn’t be in the path, like Alaska? Are going to get hit.

 

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Once upon a time after 9-11 some students and I in a chat room were talking about, if 9-11 were on purpose and a little more organized and insidious?, what would the next hit be.

We mapped it out.

 

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So far that map is pretty accurate. But we missed some stuff. We thought Seattle would go before Los Angeles. Seattle has a for shit sea wall, bad bridges, a lot of political misbehaving in terms of funds, and is the easiest physical infrastructure to take down after New Orleans. But —

We just were not imaginative enough.

 

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We never imagined someone would take out the entire Pacific Rim by blowing up Japan.

 

i should fear texas like i fear taurus

 

 

I just realized in a random conversation something I never snapped to before.

Texas is the only state in the U.S. I have returned to, to live in, besides California.

 

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I have lived in a lot of states. I lost count of interstate moves around interstate move number seven — and I keep going home to California. Move out. Move back. Move out. Move back.

 

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The ONLY other state I have ever returned to is Texas.

 

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I should fear Texas like I fear the astrological sign Taurus. Huge life altering events have happened to me in Texas. Not all good.

 

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Texas is a pattern I never saw before.

A blind spot.

I don’t have a lot of blind spots.

When they show up they are usually huge.

 

 

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===>>>where the artwork comes from:
that is from the texas experiment: ethnography

 

 

paperless my ass

 

I find it —

Annoying I have to pay extra to pay bills online. Everyone is all, Please go paperless, please go paperless! I am paperless, but then they are all, Oh, paperless, that will be $500 in online fees every year!

[Okay it depends how many bills you are carrying and I travel light and don’t have all that many but add it up, five here, five there, two there, one-fifty over there, another fee here, another there — in the end it is $300 a year min on my end and more on many other people’s.]

Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t it be an additional fee if you’re cutting down trees and licking stamps and making people open envelopes and hunt up your account number and file papers and who knows what the hell else when you pay bills?

I say from now on people mailing in checks get an additional fee and the paperless people get no more damn fees.

 

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Companies especially culpable in charging additional fees for paying online: Every. Single. Utility. Company. In. The. United. States. Of. America. AND — the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Companies who knock off fees if you pay online: The US Postal Service. God bless you USPS you are so ahead of your time. [USPS gives discounts if you buy online.]

Companies that are pretty cool about not adding additional fees for paying online:

My apartment building — the manager is so pro paperless he throws parties for companies that go paperless. Yay!

Also my auto insurance carrier, they are very pro paperless and support that. Go, Insurance Peeps, go!

Also, Verizon Wireless — who annoy me regularly but still, no online payment fees, good work Verizon yay!

Also, Clear — just picks up their fee without worrying about billing at all and never charges a collection fee. Go Clear!

 

plans for the end of the world

 

So I’ve been —

Considering all the financial meltdown and end of the world stuff for a while. I’m not convinced it won’t happen. I’m not convinced it will happen. But it might be smart to be prepared if it does. And one of the ways of being prepared is to know how to get out of the United States.

[We are not going anywhere good in the US, you know, or maybe don’t, it depends on whether you have been paying attention.]

 

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Everywhere else is melting down too. A lot of those places much faster than the U.S. Leaving pretty much the only place standing that even looks remotely reasonable Iceland, and why in Hell would Iceland want some Hollywood screenwriter?

Not to mention, if the whole world goes Mad Max, Iceland might have some problems maintaining sovereignty or borders. Hmm.

 

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What I know is, no matter what happens, people are going to want alcohol. Call it addiction, call it privilege, call it escape, whatever you call it, if the whole world falls apart, someone somewhere is going to want to go to a nice club, listen to some music, and have a sip of whiskey.

 

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I’m going to learn how to make whiskey.

[Fuck you, end of the world!]

 

wind

 

Winds —

Are whipping Austin. Whipping the trees. Whipping the air. Whipping the neighbor’s wind chimes.

I did not think I would like those wind chimes when the neighbors moved in.

But I do.

I can hear and taste the electric wind. I lift my face and nose and just breath.

 

where the art work comes from:
i lifted that off kidsgeo.com

helen caldicott: educate those corporate prostitutes in congress

 

This is Helen Caldicott speaking in front of the EPA about nuclear radiation and the need to shut down the dozens of reactors in the United States that are identical to the Fukishima plant — and almost all on fault lines.

 

 

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*Helen Caldicott is the author of Nuclear Power is Not the Answer.

 

pepper spray and dog walks

 

So I promised @Catherina_Guate —

I would write something up about living in the “zone” as in the pepper spray zone — with dogs. Which was where I found myself during WTO, with two big dogs who had to walk at least twice a day, when everything outside in Belltown, Seattle — and I mean EVERYTHING, from the sidewalk to the street to building walls to ornamental shrubs and bushes — was covered in a thick greasy layer of pepper spray.

Pepper spray sticks to everything and floats around in the world and I could not even open windows weeks after WTO ended because the smell would make you gag. On clips you see police spray that stuff at people and then you see people getting their eyes maaloxed and stuff and, from a distance, it might look like that is the end of it. But that’s not a super soaker and that is not water, pepper spray doesn’t go immediately away, it is oil based and just coats everything where it has been sprayed and it takes a long time to dissipate in an environment, especially an urban environment where most surfaces are concrete and metal and pepper spray just sits, going nowhere in a hurry except maybe all over you and your dogs when you try to take a walk.

Dog feet are the first thing you have to worry about because you can leave your shoes at the door but the dogs can’t. I started out trying to wipe the dogs pads with towels but was running out of uncompromised towels fast so we started using absorbent paper towels, like Viva. You also don’t want to spread the pepper spray around, you just want to get it off, because spreading it from the dogs’ foot pads, where it starts out, to in between dog toes where the skin is very sensitive, is bad. So every walk, we’d do the walk, then get back, and I’d use damp paper towels to wipe the dogs foot pads off a bunch, and then dry paper towels to wipe the damp away. You want to use cold water, doing this. Cold water is not fun, but it won’t spread oily residue like warm water will so stick with cold.

Because pepper spray is also on the air, it gets on dogs’ coats too. And this is another case of, you don’t want to spread the pepper spray, you just want to get as much of it off as you can. The oily pepper spray residue is sort of like poison oak, it’s an oily residue and if you use cold water and mild soap to get it off right away, it will do a lot less damage. But soap is a problem, because then that has to be rinsed off, which can further spread oil to below the outer fur coat, and I couldn’t wash the dogs every single time we took a walk. We settled for a sort of compromise, wiping the dogs’ outer coats down with paper towels moistened with cool water and then with dry paper towels to get that off them and that helped too.

Always, always wash your hands after you do this, two or three times if you can, with a dish washing detergent that cuts grease, like Dawn. You do not want to do something like rub your eye while there is any pepper spray residue on your hand from wiping down dogs and dog paws.

Also, wear a hat yourself, your hair can pick up pepper spray residue on the air as fast as the dogs’ fur can.

You want to contain the clean up area to as small a space as possible as far away from the main living environment as you can, so try to keep your cleaning stuff in an entry or vestibule, a dog with pepper spray all over his or her coat and paws will spread it to walls and carpets pretty fast so you want to do this the second you enter the door to limit tracking anything inside with you.

Clean up also applies to you. If you are traveling through pepper spray soaked areas, wear shoes you are not in love with that you can afford to get rid of later. Take them off the second you enter the house. Wear loose outer garments that cover as much of your exposed skin as possible. Take those off when you enter the house or apartment and keep them hanging by the door so you yourself don’t infect the interior living environment. It doesn’t hurt to turn them inside out while you are not wearing them, to keep the pepper spray exposed outer side contained. Also, as I said above, wear a hat or bandanna or something over your own hair too. That limits exposure of your “fur” as well. I have no idea what men with beards do in this situation but that has to be awful because beards would accrue this too.

Always wash your hands a lot, and then your face and any exposed area of your skin after you are finished with the dogs and getting out of your outer garments and shoes. Ongoing exposure to pepper spray is not good for you and the skin is permeable and will absorb that crud.

Always use water as cold as possible because remember this stuff has an oily base and hot or warm water will spread the oil – which defeats the purpose if you’re trying to get the oily stuff off you, not spread it around.

On walks, make sure your dogs do not brush up against buildings or walls or bushes in the pepper spray zone. Those are all coated and will get more pepper spray on the dogs’ coats. That goes for you too. Try to touch as little as humanly possible and limit contact surfaces to the soles of feet and sidewalks.

Hope it helps. Woof!

 

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*Where the art work comes from:
That is Dolph in Seattle wearing his shades because that’s how he rolled