"Precepts or maxims, are of great weight;..."

                                             this is from an alaska wildlife periodical years ago

 i spent the weekend talking with my neighbor who is 90 years old and still going strong...i asked him what he did for a living when i first met him and he said..."what haven't i done!" and after half a dozen hours of conversation with  him i realized he had done a lot... including professional gambler, farm foreman, with a little jail time for when he "blew a man half in two with a 12 gauge shotgun for messing with his wife..." OK a bit rash but the man lived and the shooter was released after 9 months in jail to contemplate his debt to society...which he figured the man had it coming...his entrepreneurial  tendencies were well rewarded while he served in the military as he sold his whiskey and cigarette allotment for a handsome profit as he never "smoked nothing in my life"...but he drank some when his wife left him...but thats another story...i would like to do a video auto-biography of this man while he is still active and lucid...well i have been thinking about a man being beat and stomped to death at the hands of law enforcement and how much damage that does to police community relations...there is a very big difference between the way a dog thinks and the way a pack of dogs think...and it is the same with people "Crowds and Power" by Canetti is a good reference to this kind of group think...i think police are so traumatized by negative encounters with the public so often that they just hit first and think later...it is harder to train someone not to shoot than to shoot...or stomp or punch etc...i was watching one of my history DVD's ("The History of Ancient Rome"...Prof. G.G. Fagan) and in lecture 37 he describes "The Shape of Roman Society"...and he points out how strictly stratified society was with the "Honestiores=the privileged class and the "Humiliones= the non-privileged class...of course there were a whole lot of slaves back then and they were pretty much property like a horse or cow...throughout the history of humanity there have been people who have enslaved other people simply by overpowering them...the Romans once took 20 thousand people captive and sold them as slaves in a single day...one Roman had more than 4 thousand slaves...slavery has been around as long as people have been able to get away with it...nowadays slavery has died out but not stratified society and those people who are viewed as of a lower rank in society are often abused with impunity...as long as there are people who are on the government payroll to enforce the law they much be held to account for any actions that violate the code of law...and those infractions must be so obvious to the civilian population that no one can agree that it is OK to abuse the rights of anyone whatever their perceived status...that is in the USA...the thousands of people fleeing their countries and showing up at the border to be citizens here due to  the belief that they at least have a fighting chance to live as respected citizens and equal to any...no...to ALL! other citizens...and if that ideal is not fought for and spoken for the ideals on which this country was founded are being abandoned....and were are in a bad way... "Precepts or maxims, are of great weight ; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find."  Seneca

i noticed that someone has posted a lot of photographs which are supposed to come from this very blog...but not one of them is mine...and i am the only writer of this blog...looks like it might be some asian hacker types trying sell some of their goods...half the world is hacking the other half maybe...

"Expense..."

                                   this is one of my favorite videos of a rough skinned newt

so using a linux operating system today after long last...kind of like it so far

waited more than an hour for the radiation treatment today but the treatment took less than 15 minutes...been eating way too much since the anti-testosterone drug took effect...face looks different too...i am the spitting image of michael jackson...before the face job...just kidding...watched 45 minutes of cable television in the medical facility...very very sad...food channel...competition cooking...combine that with the deadliest catch and you have combat culinary...none for me thanks...when stretched out in the hospital last week i watched a show on the history channel about catching pythons in the everglades....wrong wrong wrong...show biz to the hilt..i will give them two words of professional advise...catch pole and forked stick...they could cut their capture time by 75% at least...but the chance of getting snake bit would go way down and the sadistic audience attention would diminish...big news on the USA budget...too big say some... if the expense is an investment it will pay a dividend...if it is just one more way to appease the larcenous mob the country will be bankrupted...poor Biden has been getting a lot of scrutiny of late and it may be time to saddle up Harris  for the executive office...heard Putin say that the LGBQ(left one out i think) anyhow Putin is saying that the queers are "PURE SATANISM"...this is from a guy who has destroyed the homes of millions of people and killed their children...Putin is a sick person... i have decided i need a pronoun...and i prefer to be "IT"..."Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part of true economy."Edmund Burke

"Labor is the divine law of our existence..."

                                   porcupine turds under the tree...like little sawdust balls...didn't taste any

david crosby the the singer/guitar player went to the big songfest in the sky...he also played piano on the DVD "daylight again" and did a good job of it...his father was the director of photography on the famous movie "High Noon"...a little trivia...one of the things i have noticed when i read the quotes in the quote book...especially the quotes about "LABOR" i disagree about most of them...i think a lot of people who have never really worked their ass off put labor in a much more elevated place than it deserves...i also don't think people who get the high paying job as head of the labor department have ever labored...not that you can discredit management...their work is never done...when i hear the marxist term "proletariat" i wonder if marx ever worked...labor and management are not always at odds the objective is to get a particular thing done and then do it again...but federal minimum wage  is a disgrace and that is why the incomes of the property owners and the renters  keep getting farther and farther apart...eventually if this is not fixed the so called "poor" will disrupt the smooth functioning of society...inevitable...there was about 94 billion bucks paid out to businesses on the business bailout program and they think about 64 billion was fraudulent claims...lots of crooks...noticed today that some folks who are stalking me and harassing me seem peeved about something...hopefully i did something to get their crooked ways noticed...if everyone does not seek to stop the crooks we will all end up living much worse lives while the crooks live well...i see where they caught a mafiosi in italy who was hiding for the last 30 years...he had killed some good cops but he had more bad cops protecting him...lots of crime families around these days...every race, creed, and religion...when you can make off with government money so easily it is very tempting to do so...the crime families get so powerful that they think that they can take over the government...and sometimes they do it...a fellow told me once that the only thing more dangerous than go after the mob...is not going after the mob...my dad said that...

"Labor is the divine law of our existence; repose is desertion and suicide."  Mazzini

"Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money; but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement." S. Johnson

"Perhaps we cannot prevent this world..."

                                Ralph Nader...he brought you seat belts...a true hero of the people

so when i heard that a six year old shot a teacher with a nine mm pistol i wondered whether the gun was guilty or the child was guilty or the parent was guilty or society was guilty or whether anything or anyone was guilty...i heard a woman say in an interview that the reason most people get out of teaching is because of discipline problems...i was reading in Boswell's "Life of Johnson" about discipline in the school according to Johnson...Boswell had been hired by a teacher who had been fired for being too strict in his discipline...Johnson thought that much strictness could be tolerated if it did not leave permanent dis-figuration or impairment of the student...there was a quote by the philosopher Locke which was this.."Locke in his treatise of Education mentions a mother, with applause, who whipped an infant 8 times before she subdued it; for had she stopped at the 7th act of correction, the daughter, says he, would have been ruined..."i think the general population has less good things to say about child abuse as a means of "SUBDUING" children..

."Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured, but we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don't help us, who else in the world can help us do this." Albert Camus (1948)
 

"It almost seems that nobody can hate..."

 i went down to sandiegoville and spent a couple of days there visiting old sandiego and then flew to san antonio and took the bus to eagle pass texas and crossed there and rode a bus to saltio... i did not know it is not really friendly to gringo strangers...i was to catch the train there for mexico city...i walked around saltio and it seemed extremely dead to me...then i sat on a bench near the train depot...a little old lady who was a nun came and sat by me...i was later told it was to keep the gun slingers from gunning me to death...who knew! then the train came and i snoozed...not at all...the rough looking woman in the seat ahead of me turned around and held out a bag of peanuts and asked me if i wanted some...i took a few to be polite...i would not do it today...we passed men driving oxen pulling carts... the entire socio-economic spectrum is represented here... we pull into mexico city into what i think is known as the "north bus station"...there is another one just as big called the "south bus station"... i needed to get a room so i went outside to catch a cab...the cab took me to the "Texas Hotel" where there were a lot of tourist/agent/cop/criminal looking people...i looked for a while and said in a rather loud voice "I'm not staying here!" a female with dreads looked at me and said "now they know who you are"...well who gives a fat rats ass i thought...then the taxi brought me to a low rent place and it didn't look any too safe but it was late and i was tired so i settled into my room...after a while someone began scratching on my door...i knew what that meant...a clue from a long time ago...i couldn't figure out why that person would be here...but years later i put 8 and 8 together and remembered that he said "i shook his hand", that is the hand of the zoo boss...as it turns out that the zoo boss used to be a "crop duster" in central america, then he was made "special assistant" to the director of the national zoo, then he was the director of a major american zoo, (a rather remarkable career trajectory)  and according to many one of the best zoos in the country...and he was adored by most of the keepers i talked to...but my experiences in the zoo where i walked in circles in front of a camel were not very positive...i came to realize that the tentacles of  influence were extensive...when I awoke i went back to the bus station and bought a ticket to the coast of the baja gulf...i was sold a ticket on a bus that had already left and began to yell...of course this being the bus station in mexico city a man quickly came up and told the clerk to give me a valid ticket...he spoke perfect english and i assume he was one more agent on the job...sometimes that extensive influence is a good thing...the same song by REM kept playing on the sound system...something about loosing my religion...i got on the bus and we drove toward the coast...the bus was crowded and the scenery was interesting and new to me...old and dusty and dangerous was the impression i had...when we arrived on the coast i rented a room and went to the small open air eatery across the street...i sat down at a table and the waiter seemed alarmed...a man and his family was eating at a nearby table and he seemed to think i was showing some disrespect by eating too near this family...too bad i had to eat...then i went up to my room and noticed my belongings had been moved...pretty standard fare for this part of the world...then i went to the boat company and bought a ticket on the ferry and got a berth for about 28 bucks as i did not want to sleep on the deck on the 24 hour crossing...i settled in and there was an enormously fat fellow who stayed near my door the whole trip...when we arrived on the baja peninsula i took the bus to cabo san ludecrus and much to my surprise there was a camping park on the edge of town...i set up my camp and walked towards the beach and took a swim, but there was a storm coming in from the south and the ocean was not safe...i went back to the camp site and snoozed until morning when i began talking to another camper ...he said he was headed towards san diego by crisscrossing the peninsula and if i would split the gas we could ride together...and so we did...he knew the peninsula from previous trips there...some of the small coastal villages were very picturesque and i always thought it might be nice to spend a length of time there...but i never did...when night came we were near todo santos  and there was an abandoned building that used to be part of a  wealthy estate...there was a ladder up to a loft in a brick barn looking 

ruin so we decided to spread our sleeping bags there for the night...now i have had vivid dreams before...the aboriginals call them "big dreams'...and sometime during the night i dreamed that there was a rather old crone woman dressed in black floating above me looking down and who was saying that i must leave and was not welcomed...then suddenly there was what felt like a ball of sand that dropped onto my face...my eye actually...i sat straight up wide awake and there was a bat flying around and i shook my companion and told him we needed to leave...NOW!...we grabbed our gear and climbed down the ladder and threw our stuff into the trunk and headed towards the town... todos santos is a lovely town but probably not populated with all saints...or all devils either...we met a woman from somewhere in uppercrust california who had a boutique of some sort and who complained about the locals bad habit of taking siestas every day...which is part of the charm of mexico and all of latin america and very practical and besides many of the businesses stay open till 9 at night to make up for the lost business hours...then we drove to someplace in the moutains which i have little memory of except that it was high enough in elevation that it was much cooler...eventually we made our way to the US border and i thanked the driver for the ride north and i crossed the border on foot with my visa...i  got a visa before i entered the country even though it is not required for such a short stay...then a couple of days in sandiegoville then the amtrack north a couple of days in san fransisco to check out the hostels there...of which there were quite a few...then north to seattleville...

you may  have read this exact blog already since apparently the highly talented criminals who inhabit the pirate enclave where i rented a trailer is able to hack into my computer while i am writing... this is stressful to me to be subjected to this sort of criminality...and now that i have financial obligations which i must consider i need to be compensated for "INVASION OF PRIVACY"...pirates is not very smart...like most of the current crop of crooks they do not adhere to the motto "WE DON'T WANT NO TROUBLE!..."It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it." Eric Hoffer....eric hoffer wrote several books of philosophy...which is unusual for a person who was a longshoreman on the west coast of the USA...

"Fashion is the science..."

 so now i'm in seattleville with a backpack and less than 20 bucks...so of course i go to pike market...fish throwers...too much food i can't afford...somehow i end up in a catholic church where there is supposed to be food and shelter...it is on or near the old "skid road" where back during the logging hey-day after the trees were all felled the unemployed loggers set up their tents along the log "skid" where the logs slid down into the bay...thus the term "skid row" came to describe any place where there were a lot of people "living rough"...i forget whether i got a meal or a bed at the church place but while at the pike market i see a fellow selling "rubbings" of native petro-glyphs from the coasts of alaska and canada made with colored wax on fabric...i thought they were pretty pricy but probably considering how difficult they were to get to i suppose they were reasonably priced...and besides they guy says he was a trained anthropologist...who knows...but we struck up a conversation and he said i could live in his basement if i would help him when it came time to build plywood forms and pour concrete walls for the basement...i agreed and settled into a rather chilly and damp fossorial setting under his house...after talking to some old guys in town they said i should go to ballard to see if i could get on a salmon boat in alaska...i took one of the many buses to ballard and came to realize that seattle is really a collection of many different communities...the "U" district, "central", ballard, queen anne" and many more...i was told that the salmon processing boats would not be hiring until the middle of june or about then...so day labor looked like the best bet...then it came time to pour the concrete walls which did not go so well as the plywood forms blew apart with the weight of the concrete...not a pretty sight...wet concrete all over the place...and the home owner thanking me for telling him we had plenty of nails in the plywood...i think he was being sarcastic...anyhow i am not exactly sure of the sequence of events but i moved into the loft of a small house in the back and met another anthropologist who was renting another house...this guy was into music and said he was going to see Guy Clark in a small place in town...i asked for a ride as i was a big fan...Guy Clark performed with his son and it's a good thing his son was there as Guy was not at the top of his game...but he performed some of his well known tunes and i was happy...later i also went to another place to hear two guys called  "Hot Tuna" who used to play with "jefferson airplane" until airplane changed to starship and went too electric for Jorma and jack who stayed acoustic and the rest is history...i still think jorma is as good a guitar player as robert johnson...it was a place with no seating...so i stood as close to the stage as i could get...a great yet tiring concert...eventually i ended up in the King Baldy  Hotel where a fellow who had the bunk above mine and who would smoke a bit of hashish in the evenings asked me if i wanted a job on a salmon boat...he said he did not think he could pass the piss test he needed to take the next morning and if i would go to this address and see this man he might hire me in his place...i went there and after talking to the hiring guy i was told that i was hired and would fly out of sea-tac airport the next morning and i needed rubber boots and a raincoat...i hit the ground runnnig and managed to get to the airport with my gear, board the plane and fly to anchorage and then to dutch harbor to get on the "Storgefiord" which i think is "slave ship" in some scandinavian language...we started out innocently enough...12 hour days as we headed west for ikigik a remote place at the mouth of a river where the fishing had been restricted for the last five years because they had overfished and wiped out the salmon and there were lots of processing boats like ours trying to buy whole salmon from the gill-netters and we the slaves would "H and G" them (head and gut them and put them in metal pans and into the freezer...then the salmon began to "run" thick and fast and the 12 hour days increased to 13, 14, 15,16,17,18, 19,20,21,22,23,24...up and working for 24 hours! and then 2 hours rest then more hours! now the the names of my crew members are forever scalded into my synapses...the PTSD i feel when i see a whole salmon causes my back to hurt and my arms to ache...there was david another processor, and Russ T the deck-hand, who actually had a merchant mariners document so he got paid more for doing less work, and then the "cambodian" prick...not a very good worker but he was the "asian connection" as it turns out...and he took a shower when no one else could as the water was being rationed...and of course "Todd the Bod" who was the body building mate who brought up his body building girlfriend who was actually the most pleasant person on the boat...but she caught pneumonia and had to fly back to oregon where she was a competitive weight lifter...and nice to look at...but her boyfriend used to come down to where we were cutting up fish and he would work real fast to show us how it could be done...but he got plenty of rest and never spent more than half an hour processing fish...what a jerk...and they fired the black cook and brought on a woman named "Stephanie" (probably not her real name) she had a "tankerman" endoresment so she was qualified to fuel the ship...like that was a real steady job..NOT!...the food was no better than the other cooks and at least he would show up in the processing room and give a hand when he could... my arms hurt so bad that i could only rest while sitting up on the edge of the bunk...the engineer said it was "tendonitis" or strained tendons from holding the knife for so long...and he said it would only get worse...not a happy future...the engineer was a norwegion named "GEAR" which is a good name for an engineer...and i would recommend that if you need to go to sea...go to sea with a norwegian...still lots of viking blood and world class seamen...i brushed against gear as i came up the stairs in the engine room...he was hard as a rock...and probably 20 years older than me...the chief slave driver was captain codington or something like that...he was abused on fishing boats as a youth and was determined that others must be abused also...pay their dues and all that crap...somewhere along in here at midnight i turned 40 years old...and i realized my retirement plan needed some more planing...then there were problems and the three other boats owned by the same company the (company was from Sweden as it turns out) all came together and one of the other boats had a leak in their freezer and their fish thawed out and began to rot so they transfered them to our boat which had a good freezer and eventually we met up with a boat in the middle of nowhere with a non-american flag and an all asian crew and we did an "off-load" of all our fish to the asian boat...now all the hard work had been done and they did not want the likes of me to split the money with...and the cambodian prick went with the asian boat as well...they probably had him tortured and killed when they realized they had been sold rotten fish...but maybe that's a popular thing with them...but probably not...well after about 6 weeks i had  worked all the 20 hour days i cared to work...and it was agreed that i should pack my pack and get out at Dago creek...i got in the rowboat and was told that i should walk down the trail until i got to a cleared spot in the tundra like and wait for a two seater plane which would pick me up...soon a native guy came driving up on a 4 wheeler with a 12 gauge shotgun...he said i should ride with him...i asked him why that was...and he points to the ground and says "look, bear tracks, a mother and a baby!" i agree and hop on the back of his machine...then he puts me off at the edge of the pick-up spot...eventually a small plane arrives...as we fly over the vastness of alaska the pilot keeps pointing to moose which are standing next to the many small lakes...we get to King Salmon and i wait for a 4 seater plane...while i am waiting i decide i want to eat someting that was not "boat food"...but even a burrito is 13 bucks...i decide to eat nothing...i am a pretty traumatized person by now and in the anchorage airport i look around for someone i could kill...or at least maim...but i want to revel in my coming paycheck more than i want to kill and maim...physical stress has an interesting effect on people...so does money...we get back to the sea-tac airport and i get back to the King Baldy  Hotel and rent a bed...the typical scam in the salmon processing business is you get the sucker to sign a contract to work 90 days then make it so hard that the sucker cannot work that many days and the sucker has to pay for the transportation costs to and from the boat...i went to the office where i was hired and told them that i worked more than anyone and if i did not get all my money i would make trouble...so they cut me a check and it looked bigger than what was in my pocket but not really worth the trauma of the slave ship...i think $2800 bucks...and a woman in black asked me if i wanted to sign up for another tour..."now that you know the ropes"...i think not i said...i was still worn down and needed to rest someplace cheap and i figured i would go to Mexico and lay around...i had never spent any time there and really did not have a clue...i was to get a real lesson in questionable safety...

                                                                        fire on the mountain