words, words, words

It’s official… Washington, D.C. is a third world city. They have decreed that you cannot drink the water. Apparently, it is full of lead.

Over coffee and doughnuts this morning I had a moment of clarity. Genius actually.

Whereas, if I were on “The Apprentice”, and if I heard Donald Trump say those soon to be trademarked words, “Your fired.”

Whereas, they were directed at me.

Whereas, I became an ex-candidate for the apprenticeship.

I would reach over and grab his wig off his head and make a run for it.

I had a conversation with a friend a few days ago that I have been thinking about. The conversation was about whether or not the world is falling apart faster these days, or if we have always thought that.

Given the assassination of the leader of Hamas, the tunnel escape of somebody who may or may not have been a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda in Pakistan…. all of the newest junk. I think we are falling apart more than we were 5 years ago. Are things as dismal as they seem? Is entropy really pulling the world into the muck or are we just in a cycle of dramatic change?

If you think about the end of the American empire in comparison to the end of any other empire: the British, the Roman, the French, Spanish, any of them… they citizens of those empires all probably thought the same thing at some point, the same thing I, and I’m sure others are thinking. “Oh crap, things are getting worse, the world as we know it is falling apart.”

The good news is that George W. is in trouble, again.

The entire world knows that he was anxiously awaiting any reason to invade Iraq. “You made a mockery of my Daddy and now you’re gonna die.”

Nothing like vigilante hillbilly justice to give you faith in the President.

Vegas Baby.

Just got back from Las Vegas.

A fun time was had with our friends Betsy and Heinrich.

However, I can safely avoid Vegas for a very, very, long time.

We wandered on the strip. Tried to make some money from the casinos, etc..

I think the most interesting thing about the trip was the other people there. It is so uniquely American; the detritus of the world winds up there. There is an effluvial fan of hairspray. Every class and the class-less mingle there.

Los Rental Car Diablitos

We just completed our quest for a rental car and now begins my rant:

We booked our rental car on the Internet and went to Cardiff to go pick it up. We arrived to find a sign on the door saying that the owner closed early to go to the bank. “See you tomorrow at 8:00 AM”. I guess she didn’t want my business.

So we called Budget Rental Car to tell them and they said that we could go to a different Budget but it would be 33% more expensive. What the %#$@ ?!?!

So we bolted home, on Interstate 5, which if you have spent any time in San Diego, you would know is impossible at 5:00 pm. We then quickly re-booked on the Internet and then went to a different rental car place in Carlsbad, which was indeed more expensive than the first one.

Now I am waiting to see if Budget, truly the worst rental car company in the universe, is going to try and charge me for the first car rental, which never happened.

But at least now we have a car to go to … Las Vegas, Nevada tomorrow.

We are going to see Heinrich and Betsy, our friends from Bali/Sun Valley. Hopefully, I will win enough money that I don’t have to look for work when we return, although I’m not counting on it.

No surf today. But that didn’t stop me from paddling around. I went to the Tomato Patch, a.k.a. Sea Bluff, a.k.a a little bit north of Grandview. Just myself and a few Japanese kids out. Not a super-productive day today. I met with nice guy about some web design ideas, and general business stuff, hopefully we will have some gigs starting up soon. We basically hung out at Pannakin, a coffee shop in Encinitas which has a lot of chairs outside, a groovy art gallery downstairs, and some old tools on the wall. It was nice to be sitting in the sun planning a way to make a bit of money… as opposed to sitting somewhere knee deep in snow, doing the same thing.

We just returned from a trip Palomar Mountain State Park with Seamus. The drive took about an hour, through orange groves, strawberry patches and flower farms. We dodged leather-clad fools on slick Japanese super-charged motorcycles the entire way. Then we flexed our California State Park Pass muscles and got into the park for free, which was a bonus.

The Park itself was beautiful, really quite stunning and it is so close to the urban/sub-urban sprawl of the rest of San Diego County. The air was fresh; the temperature was cool, but not cold. The sun was shining, there were pine trees, silence.

It was beautiful.

Driving back we looked at the new housing tracts coming up, talked about our hometown, how the whole area was being developed, the run-up in housing prices, the shitty construction materials they use to make the new houses, etc.

I started feeling sick. These houses, this sprawl is unsettling. The new houses are perched on the land like flies on a corpse. Something is going to give.

(And here is another simile, for free. Browsing the Internet is like strolling down the street in Tijuana. People are always trying to grab your attention and sell you things. That is why RSS, and other pull technologies, are so nice. They free us from having to look at pop-up ads and clever redirects from Google rankings.)

I just listened to the most interesting program on This American Life. The show talked about Jerry Springer’s political ambitions, his subsequent fall from grace and possibility of seeking political ambitions again. Very interesting stuff. If he could get elected, and divorce himself from his horrible show, he might do the country some good.

How weird is that?

The surf was small today. I think it might pick up a bit tomorrow.

Not too much to report from Southern California.

3-11

A terrible tragedy occurred in Spain today.

A number of bombs in a number of trains were detonated killing dozens of innocent people. They were mostly students and people on their way to work. Another base attack on innocent people.

Whether it was ETA or a radical Islamic group, I think that the government is being a bit hasty in blaming ETA. Due to the date (3-11), the magnitude of the attack and the lack of warning, I think that perhaps the real blame will lie with Jihadis. Hopefully, the Spanish government and people will remain pragmatic and investigate the culprits instead of passing Draconian security laws like we did in America.

My heart goes out to Spain today. I’m terribly sorry.