Mid-March 2006	Oct 13 2008

Some great quotes from Naomi Klein regarding the bailout as an example of the shock doctrine.

"The offloading of that private debt onto the public payroll is really just the first stage, because the crisis that Wall Street wants to get rid of isn't being solved - the location is being moved, it's dumped on taxpayers, dumped on Washington. The really scary part comes when the crisis is used as the excuse for why the next administration can't afford health care, why it has to privatize social security, why you need to cut corporate taxes to make America more competitive. ... The real disaster has yet to hit."

from http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/54244-are-we-witnessing-the-shock-doctrine-in-effect

and here's a real zinger:

"The Bush administration doesn't really believe in the free market. They have invented no-risk capitalism. ... They spend seven years just transferring public money into private hands, [then] their final act is taking [over a trillion dollars of] private debt and transferring it into public hands."

from her recent interview on The Colbert Report, here:

http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/55758-colbert-report-naomi-klein-warns-of-wall-street-shock-doctrine

(For those wishing to understand what she's talking about with "transferring public money into private hands," check out her book, The Shock Doctrine. Here's one of exhaustively many examples: no-bid cost-plus contracts awarded to Halliburton and other contracting companies to "rebuild" Iraq - many billions of dollars for projects that were fully funded and paid for yet never came anywhere close to completion.)

I thought it was a fantastic book, and Naomi Klein is a hero of the free press. The bailout just passed is a textbook example of the shock doctrine in practice, with the suburban cash-out mentioned in the prior post being the new form of extraction of wealth and power for the few.

It occurred to me that this financial bailout is the cashing-out on the real value of suburbia during an era of cheap liquid transportation fuels. As the price rose and rose on suburban land, it was used to create huge fortunes for a relative few based on the debt they collateralized as the price rose. Then, when the price began to fall on suburbia, that private debt was transferred to the public whereas the fortunes made on the rise of the valuation of suburbia and the resulting debt were not. In effect, this was a massive transfer of wealth from the public into a relative few private hands. Am I wrong here?

The hot tub is ready for use! Yay!

WHEREAS: it is impossible to fully rinse detergent out of clothing, and
WHEREAS: detergent in the tub causes undesirable froth, and
WHEREAS: being naked is fun!
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT: clothing is prohibited in this spa.

Mid-March 2006	October 2, 2008

( Lots more pics below the fold! )

( Warning: it's long and rambling, self-indulgent and self-pitying, but that's why I blog on livejournal so bite me. )

Oh man, this is pretty cool! Have you heard about the Large Hadron Collider that just started under France? If not, well, um, never mind, but if so, check out these webcams they set up over there!

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

The landscapers started today. It's only been a few hours and already the cherry and apple trees are gone. I apologized to them this morning before the landscaper came, but I wish I could have been more sincere / emphatic.

The neighbors have noticed. I only told one contiguous neighbor of the five, Margaret, in advance. The Zangers behind me and the Torgersons catty-corner to the northeast, both retired couples, have been spectating with shocked expressions. I kind of want to hide, but the adult thing would of course be to go talk to them about it. But they're old and churchy and crotchety, and I fear they'll have strong opinions on what I should be doing, when I don't really care what they think. Nonetheless, my silence in advance (and in truth, silence still) may come back to bite me. The Torgersons haven't made nice at all since I went and introduced myself two years ago, but with the Zangers I've had a few conversations. I feel guilty about my silence. I just don't want conflict.

I'm extremely nervous. This is a lot of money and a big change to my home. I'm scared but hopeful.

The contractor, Grant, pointed out that it would be great to limb up a tree reaching over from Margaret's property, for light and headroom. Legally speaking, although she owns the wood the limb is composed of, I could have it cut off at the property line and deliver the limb to her. But we're friends, and I'm not like that, and for the health of the tree it would be best to cut the limbs at the trunk. I called her at work expecting she'd have no problem with it but instead she, worrier that she is, was adamantly opposed. She referred to some history with the tree that she couldn't get into on the phone from work, but that she would really prefer the limbs remain exactly as they are, although she volunteered she knew about my legal right to cut it and the health implications for the tree. We'll talk about it tonight when she comes home and can see what I'd like to do. I'm curious what this "history" with the tree is and I really hope she comes around - it's irrational worrywart obstinacy, as far as I can tell. The limbs I'd like to remove don't do anything for her - no screening, no nothing. I'm baffled as to why she's so adamant these limbs remain at my head's height in my yard for her sake.

I guess I should have taken "before" pictures. Maybe I'll take some this afternoon. Oh but hrm the pcmcia slot was the way I used to get pictures off my camera, and that laptop bit the dust. I'm not much of a picture-taker anyway.

Some thumps roused me from my terminal while writing this: they're starting to remove the old, small, composite-cement patio. The sweet gum should be coming out later this week. After that, I expect they'll start the excavation for the pond, plant the arbor vitae hedges, do the weeding, and start installing the new pavered patio. I expect I should be able to get the hot tub and gazebo delivered around the end of September, and the electrical hooked up to it by early October. Wish me luck!

Finally got around to scanning the picture of me in my red dress from Red Dress '08. Enjoy.

LMAO

http://www.wegame.com/watch/World_of_Workcraft/

This is about energy! Not the chi/prana kind of energy but the kilowatt-hour kind of energy.

I just thought it would be neat to find a graph like this one and just put it out there and see if anyone wanted to talk about it. How does this graph make you feel? What conclusions do you draw from it? Discuss. :)

I call shenanigans on the cultural representation of love and boyfriendship.

First, the media. That is: a medium, but plural, of communication. I'm tired of seeing plays, movies, books, stories of people who fall in love in a matter of a few chapters, or an hour and a half. It's fantasy and it's grotesque! Even if within that hour and a half, a week or two has passed in the timeline of the narrative (this seems to be the absolute maximum), it still bears no resemblance to reality as I see it. Further, is it irresponsible? Three out of five end in divorce / a matter of course. (Eddie from Ohio)

A friend recently was proud to announce his new boyfriend. I hadn't spoken to this friend in a few weeks and the last time I had, he was single. Though I also know his new boyfriend, I suspect a few weeks ago they didn't know each other either.

Is this not egregious impatience? To me, boyfriendship is something that to be respected must only be conceded, eventually to one another and to the world, not paraded at first opportunity! Where on earth am I getting this idea? I know I'm in the minority here. It seems to be the common practice to get together with someone, for the sake of not being single, unless you *like* being single, which don't get me wrong, seems also to be perfectly respectable. I don't know where I'm getting it from, but it just doesn't feel genuine. It's not that I'm not impatient, either; I express my impatience in a different (cough promiscuous cough) way. Where are the other people that are interested in not being single, could likely be unsingle easily with people they like, yet don't feel genuine doing so? Perhaps I make too much of the labels, love and boyfriendship. I should claim them without trepidation! This afternoon, grocery shopping, check, library, check, get a boyfriend, check, fall in love, check. Should I look back in a week and a half and realize I don't want to be this boyfriend and I'm not in love any more, well, then it's just that we've changed! Last week's claim wasn't cheap! Just temporary. But on some future iteration it won't be, and that's the way the game is played, eh?!

can be found here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/gordyf/TimSCat?authkey=xAasJ8Ya84c

Thank you Gordy and Chris!

So it turns out that Cinco de Mayo is not the Mexican analogue of the Fourth of July - that's Dieciséis de Septiembre. Evidently it's mostly ignored in Mexico, and celebrated mainly by Mexican-Americans in the US. Read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo

http://www.vivacincodemayo.org/history.htm

I guess I always knew I was a kooky beyond-the-Leftist, but this book is incredible. It's like reading Noam Chomsky but with organized, sequentially sensical, focused chapters and without the same overtones of intellectual bullying. I'm only halfway through the second chapter, but ( here are a few quotes I found myself jumping up and down inside screaming YES! YES!: )

Note to self: anticipate that those applying to an ad to rent your room will be young, likely early-twenties or younger.

Why this hadn't occurred to me until Wes pointed it out ... just goes to show how silly I can be. It's obvious now that he pointed it out, but ... somehow I'd had in my mind's eye a roughly-my-age housemate, and it hadn't even occurred to me that that's actually really unlikely.

Thanks to all of you who read about and especially those who provided feedback on my housing contemplations!

Checking out the condo and answering all the questions on my housing-satisfaction-list was a great thing to do. I felt like I had a report card on that place and a report card on my current place and I got to compare their performances. Better yet, I got a feeling for the broad strokes of the report card for any condo downtown.

The results were interesting: the condo only outperformed the house on two items: view (spectacular but the novelty would wear off) and location, and the location actually turned out to be not quite as prime as I'd hoped. There are a lot of vacant commercial spaces, including some recently-out-of-business ones, and the distance was farther than I'd thought to the places I'd have been frequenting. On everything that this house outscored the condo, it did so by a great margin.

Thus I've come to a decision: I'm going to stay where I am, for at least an arbitrary four years and four months more. If it weren't for the cats, I might have tried the sublet thing, but instead I'm just going to hunker down. Perhaps they're in my life for just this reason. I may still try staying in a hotel downtown for a few weekends for the fun of playing at urban living, but the medium-term decision is made.

I feel relieved to have reached a decision, as I now feel that I can move on. One step in moving on was deciding which room I'm going to rent out; I decided on that today - the large downstairs bedroom, so the downstairs bathroom will be "his". I'll craft a craigslist ad tomorrow. I'll make the small downstairs bedroom my office - the scale of the space fits the usage - and the upstairs front bedroom the guest room, so I can still take advantage of the southern sun there for plants. I'll get my car detailed and grant myself permission to use it much more. I'll get a permaculture design made for the yard that includes enclosing the back patio to make a space for eventual hot tubbing. All this brain activity is flowing now that the decision to stay has been made. Thanks again those who read and provided feedback! You helped me out greatly.

I'm really hoping for some advice from those close to me.

So, when I moved to Portland, I had a hankering to know what it would be like to live in place with a big yard like when I was little. I wondered what it would be like to garden, and to have a dog, and to be removed from the hustle and bustle of the urban apartments I'd been in for the last five years, and to have lots of interior space. I was also freaking out about Peak Oil and wondered if having a bit of land in a neighborhood space-insulated from the urban center would be the right choice for future security. So, I bought this 2470 square foot four-bedroom house in the suburbs on a 0.35 acre lot, 2 miles from the freeway, 6 miles from downtown Beaverton, 12 miles from downtown Portland.

Now, though, my priorities have changed. While I had been just as car-dependent as I am now back between undergrad and grad in 2001-2003, from 2003-2007 I really changed. While I still owned a car, I rarely used it, and I felt really great about that. Part of it is the environmental aspect, more of it is the Peak Oil aspect, but even more than all that it's a matter of feeling connected to the place and the people around me as I travel through it. Hippy dippy I know, but walking and biking allows me to connect with place and fellow humans in a way being in a car doesn't, and that connection makes me happy. There's also a Chi-like sense of being very subtly pinned when I use my car to get somewhere: it feels like I've brought with me this very unnatural huge chunk of plastic and metal for which I'm responsible, and it's in the back of my mind while I'm doing whatever I'm doing where I am that that ball and chain needs to be considered, the responsibility for it needs to be minded. The same thing is true when I have my bike with me, but it's not nearly as great a subtle weight. When I'm out on transit and foot or have caught a ride from someone, I feel a great freedom that all I have to be responsible for is right here, with me. It's a difficult thing to explain, but I can't shake it, I have to conclude it's very real for me. I'm green with envy at Doug who just sold his car; I think he understands really well where I'm coming from on this.

This personal-automobile aversion is incompatible with suburban living, however. I thought that public transit could help me work this out, and I've given it an honest go, but the two miles to the transit center involves about 300 feet of elevation difference: I didn't even *think* about that when getting this place. That equivalent of 30 stories I've got to self-propel up on my way home from using transit (as well as the weather difference here from the silicon valley) means almost every time I use transit, there's a four-mile round trip in my car to the transit center. That's not so bad, but the transit center's parking lot is full on weekdays from ~ 8 AM till 4 PM. I've been on a waiting list for a bike locker there for two and a half years, with no sign of a spot opening soon. (Oh the irony - a multi-tens-of-millions 630-space parking structure featuring 6 bike lockers costing at most a few thousand dollars and a three-plus year waiting list for a bike locker.) More than all of this, though: transit's a great alternative to driving for me when I've got to go somewhere far, but I find it just can't substitute for a walkable community like I thought it could. I could have my cake of not being car-dependent and eat it too by being able to get where I want to quickly and conveniently IF I lived downtown.

Which brings me to the point: I'm now seriously considering moving, not out of Portland - I don't feel I've yet given it an honest go, there are things about it I love, and I still think it's a far-and-away winner over the next decades of Peak Oil - but downtown. I have an appointment tomorrow to check out what looks like a really sweet apartment (rental - a one-year lease) in a great location.

I've been courting this idea for a while, but never this seriously: I actually scheduled a viewing. I must be for real!

My number one concern here is that I'm once again trying to manage my own life to meet my desires rather than entrusting that management to my higher power: Sentient Good, Beauty Personified, Creator of Love-in-the-Abstract, God. I keep praying for knowledge of Hir will for me and the power to carry it out, but it's never possible to know for sure.

I also made a long list of questions to help me appraise how pleased I think I'd be living in any potential location. There are things about this house that, even though I now realize I'm not going to get a dog nor garden, I do really enjoy relative to something downtown, and those questions are on the list. Just staying here is a hands-down far wiser financial decision. It causes me to by happenstance be in greenspace (my front yard) often, it's much quieter here and there aren't panhandlers outside my building door. The gym here is SO much better than my options would be there. The recurring costs per square foot are much cheaper, the cats love it, and cleaning their catbox is (relatively speaking) a cinch. I also recognize that where I live, as a data point in isolation, won't make me happy and won't execute God's will.

On to logistics. I cannot qualify for a mortgage while I'm unemployed, so either 1) I stay where I am, 2) I sell the house to enable purchasing a condo, 3) I get a job to enable purchasing a condo without selling the house, 4) I rent an apartment downtown, or 5) ??.

1) Stay where I am:

If I do this, I need to focus on the positives of this place. I need to make driving as enjoyable as I possibly can. And I need to get a roommate: this house is far too large for me! Again it's a Chi thing, but I don't feel comfortable being the only occupant of this much space. Most of all, I resign myself to not living in a walkable and transit-hub community. I'm leaning strongly toward this choice, because it's easy, it's the most financially sound decision, and it's safe. I could

2) Sell the house to enable purchasing a condo:

I think this is a very unwise financial decision, and a possibly unwise future personal security decision. I don't know yet if living downtown will be all it's cracked up to be, and having the house to come back to in a year (or ten...) seems like a good idea. Nonetheless, I should consider this option, but I'm not leaning very far toward it.

3) I get a job to enable purchasing a condo without selling the house:

I'm not too keen. I'd like to have this summer to be an unemployed playboy in the walkable-community experience to balance against last summer's suburbia experience, then get a job in the fall. The seasons are so much more important to the experience of place here than they were in California. Further, I would need to grapple with the negatives of renting out the house, which is a business, which is a job, while I also had another full-time job. Nonetheless, this is a slightly more financially sound decision than:

4) rent an apartment downtown without selling the house

This is a bad financial decision, perhaps even worse than #2, although it will definitely wind up having been better than #2 if after a year I decide suburbia was better. I'm nonetheless strongly leaning toward this option. My main reservation isn't the financials (you can't take it with you, live each day as though it were your last, etc.) but rather the scariness of renting out the house. Screening applicants, likely getting a management service, dealing with the huge yard maintenance: am I up to these things? Secondarily, the "waste" of such sums of money does give me pause. Are the things I desire about downtown living really worth that much money to me?

5)

Something I haven't thought of, but you have!

Closing as the manifesto opened, I'm really hoping for some advice from those close to me.