The Ordeal: understanding Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs

For about the twentieth time I went in the laundry room and flipped the light switch. Nothing. There was no power, there had been no power for days actually. It was funny in an ironic way, it was a habit I guess, almost a reflex action I had grown quite used to, flipping on the light, and now it was gone.

The storm was something to behold, I guess several people were killed, I didn’t care that much about them, I was dealing with my own mess. I had to go to work, I was working as a warehouse manager and I needed to get ready for inventory. This involved all the regular standard work on top of the inventory gig. I told the owners the only way possible to make it happen was to open the purse strings for overtime, they said no.
When I first left the house after the storm, trees and power lines were down everywhere, I didn’t actually grasp how bad it was or I wouldn’t have gone “out there”, because then I had to get back. I was driving under trees across the road, under and over live power lines. Coming back, to help things out, the cops were closing all the roads. That is nice when all the local hotels are full and there is no way to even gas up because the gas stations can’t pump either with no juice. Very rapidly it starts to dawn on you how fucked everything is.

I did have a wood stove for heat and some possible cooking. Of course I didn’t really have a bunch of wood. The next morning a cold snap hit to make it really an insult-to-injury kind of cold. Normally to be really windy and stormy it isn’t that cold here, now it was. I wondered just how all the people in apartments with no insulation and no wood stove were making it. Soon there was no hot water and it was getting a little depressing. At one time the power had been connected with the local fire station and so it was a priority to get it back on. Now it seemed they had changed the lines and they had generators and things were different.
At work there was power, but no showers of course and coming home was no longer very appetizing. I learned some things. Hot coffee in the morning is a very important ritual. Light to put in contact lenses is very helpful. I began to understand Mazlow’s Heirarchy of needs much better.

I missed light the most, and then heat, after that most likely my computer and a line to the outside world, (yes I had a cell phone). It was funny but most people complained about TV the most, apparently it is impossible to raise children without one today. Recently, being snowed in for Christmas 2008, that was OK, plans with family had to be changed, we still haven’t had our Christmas roast dinner, but having light and heat, things were OK.

Surveying the Neighborhood

Currently, I am more intimately acquainted with the daily doings of my neighbors than previously, and it is good to know what is happening around the neighborhood. Who know if I live near criminals, or child molesters or maybe Neo-Cons..? Egad! If I walked around by myself previously, the way I have been recently, I would be most likely stopped and questioned by the police, people would call in and report me for being “suspicious”, some people think I look that way simply sitting in a chair anyway. Now however, I am walking the dog and so everything is okey-dokey, instead of them wondering what I am doing they think ‘he better not let his dog shit in MY yard, damn his eyes”!!

We now know the kids across the street who stand outside and furtively smoke by the storm drain, people we most likely never would have met before. We know other dog people out on their own walk-abouts, since of course the dogs have to meet and size each other up. I see houses for sale and open houses and kids playing, junk for sale, and all manner of goofy things I would normally not bother with. I meet and talk with people that I have nothing in common with but they own a dog, and I own a dog, and…Wheee..I guess.

Some people are afraid of Pinky, especially kids, and I suppose I can’t blame them she is large and black, and almost ridiculously strong, although really just a big puppy. I was surprised to learn recently that the number one dog-bite offender in the US, are in fact black labs, go figure.

So we troop around and inspect stop sign smells, and “trails by their wear attesting to their utility” or whatever Thoreau said. We try and chase squirrels up the ladder and analyze whether we can jump up in the air and catch birds. We stare at airplanes with tilted heads and wonder respectively what they are, or wonder whether I built that particular one. After a while people are used to us, and we fit in, and people don’t notice us much as we inspect our world just a little closer, together.

Calling Google, are you there?

Hey Google are ya there?

I can’t find any good way to contact Google or submit ideas. They all seem to lead to the Help area which is about using what they already have going.

Here’s an idea; add a search window to blogger to search blogger.

I know they have a search tool for searching within particular blogs, that is not much help. Also I suppose I could use the standard search tool in advanced mode and screw around, or use blog search but I want something simpler. I want a window at the top of the page to search all blogger results around the world for topics and common interests. Does this sound like twitter?

I want to be able to type in “photography” or “quiche recipes for gay Labradors” and then find other people in the world writing about those topics. In this way we could link up and compare notes and do that whole social networking thing people are into now.

So what’s up Google, ya there?

Keep the Home Fires Burning

It is interesting now when thinking of going out to eat or purchasing a new kitchen faucet, I actually consider; this purchase might very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for this or that local business.

I know that seems overly dramatic, but in these economic times there is a point, maybe late on a cold March evening, when you have to look at your business, maybe look in the mirror and then shut the door forever. This is important for more than just being nice to people for me. I live a ways out, and although Costco might be a bit cheaper, even though their shopping experience is hellish, I don’t always want to drive 10 miles for small things. The Safeway here is much bigger, brighter and nicer, but the local store is cheaper, friendlier and has much better meat and local produce, it is also closer, within walking distance and I would really miss their small weird little store if they closed.

Camera stores, like Kenmore Camera, are one of my favorite stores. When buying a new camera it is tough to buy there when the online equivalent will be maybe $200 cheaper. I really want them to stay in business though. For one thing when shopping I want to be able to hold something in my hands and get a feel for it. Ah, what to do.., I try and throw them business to show appreciation for what they do for me when I can.

Locally we have too many restaurants; we had five teriyaki places for a small town. Some shakeout is inevitable; I would like to pick and choose what stays though. The way I vote is money I suppose. Right now the town in its infinite wisdom has decided to re-do all the major downtown roads which makes it even harder to shop the local shops. The tavern a somewhat famous biker type place had been in business for 86 years, it is now gone.

It would appear when done a year or more from now the economy will close about half the stores in town. Right now I have to think and ponder a bit when making purchases, if not I may lose a piece of town I take for granted. The local hardware store is important, when needing small items I don’t want to have to drive to Monroe or Woodinville all the time, I bought the faucet from them. You are welcome True Value, may you live long and prosper!

Black and White and bleeding Red all over: Newspapers

Everybody around the Seattle area (and a few others), has been bemoaning the loss of the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper, for a week at least, which published its last hard copy paper edition today, although they will continue online.

The Times crying for the PI is the funniest, since they have been at each other’s throats litigiously for a long time now. Clearly, if a major paper is to survive at all they will have to stand alone and also make major changes in the way they try and do business, and quickly.
Ian Furness is another funny one. Being a DJ on sports talk 950AM radio in Seattle, he lamented the loss of the PI, saying he needed a hard copy of the sports page for his morning constitutional. Hey guess what Ian, you sloppy jackass? KJR talk radio is one of the reasons I don’t need the sports page! THINK!

Using the sports page as an example of the larger issue, many forms of information were not available before. ESPN and FOX NW sports and so on, were not there to compete in the newspaper heyday. Neither were sports radio shows. And of course the internet was not there either.
I find it funny that some people think bloggers have nothing to add as they don’t have enough inside poop to be valuable. I have heard it said that bloggers simply rehash what has been written about in the newspapers, apparently to some they are idea-less. I don’t agree with this of course and find it silly.

Websites like Craigslist are hurting the papers more than bloggers I think. People really can’t see paying for classified ads when a better service is free for the taking. How could the brains behind the PI not see that one coming? I think the Times will have to come up with special promotions to sell papers. They need a craigslist free posting board but better and more locally integrated. They could start charging a nominal fee for subscription to the online site. I would personally be willing to pay $10 a year to keep them open.

Drugs? Legalize them, so we can control them!

Really, the catastrophic failure in Iraq is small peanuts compared to the failure of our “War on Drugs”. The war on drugs has been going on so long, and has woven its way into things like our foreign policy to such an extent, that there is no longer any clear way to measure the monsterous monetary cost. It is fantastic though and we all know that. The worser part is that the financial cost is nowhere near the thing that makes this so wrong-headed and horrible.
Consider folks:

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, by far. China, Russia and India together have less people in prison than us.

The Economist call for an end to the madness: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13237193&source=hptextfeature

The CIA says that the two most unstable countries in the world right now are Afghanistan and Mexico. That is right, Mexico, over neighbor, over 7,000 people were murdered last year along the US-Mexico border. The drug cartels standing army is larger than the Mexican national army. It is truly amazing but American drug laws are literally tearing apart the governments of countries like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and many others. 90% of the guns confiscated in Mexico were purchased in the US.

It is far easier for a school kid in the US to buy drugs than booze.
Think about this; we are helping terrorists with our drug laws. The main money maker for the Taliban in Afghanistan is opium.

The budget of the State of Washington is 50% spent on corrections, and we’re broke.
How about this? More people in the US every year die from cigarettes and booze than all illegal street drugs and illegal use of prescription drugs combined.

You would have thought we had learned our lesson. When alcohol was illegal anyone who wanted it could buy it anyway, they just bought it from illegal sources, which made crime syndicates like Al Capone’s very rich and powerful. Capone bought off judges and the law and made them corrupt as well. It isn’t just the tax revenue that is lost, which is huge, it is the loss of control as well. If a drug dealer is doing something illegal anyway, if he is looking at huge jail time anyway, why not sell to kids? Do you think drug dealers are afraid of jail time? Do you think drug dealers are afraid of police? Drug dealers are afraid of one thing only, their friends.

Kids can’t buy booze because there is no money in it. If I am outside a liquor store and a kid wants booze what would I gain by buying it for him? Ten bucks? HA! It is not worth the risk is it?

The really, really sad part of all this is the police actually brag when they drive up the price of street drugs. When a heroin addict needs the shit to keep from going into withdrawal and the price goes up, do they just stop, do they think “hey maybe I will go into de-tox and better my life”? Of course not. They don’t have medical plans, they don’t have choices, they are too far gone for that. They must commit crime to feed the habit, if the price goes up they need to commit more crime. When the police raise the price of drugs they are literally increasing violent crime.

Here is an idea. Let’s get all these young men out of prison and put them to work, our country is in trouble we need to quit screwing around. Let’s make a bunch of tax money off of drugs, and build bridges with it. Let’s look at what Portugal is doing and admit our plan is not working. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/14/portugal/index.html

Let’s admit that just making something like drugs illegal does not make it harder to get. If you doubt this for one minute…try this. Go to downtown Seattle with $100 cash. Try and buy Percodan or Marijuana on the street, see which one you get quicker.

Let’s cut our losses on something that will never work. Let’s admit drugs are no worse than cigarettes or booze, let’s tax it and move on. We have too much work to do, we are in too bad of shape to worry about people getting high in this crazy world. We have the data, clearly what we are doing now doesn’t work and it is time for a change.

The door knocked

The door knocked, the dog barked, Christ! It sounded like someone broke the window in the door!

I assumed it was the dude to replace the kitchen counter dropping by to check something, (he is supposed to show up tomorrow). So I look out, it is two, cute, fresh scrubbed, little girls, one tall redhead wearing some plaid school girl uniform, and one short Asian with a round face, with ….name tags….uh oh…….

Turns out they were selling something alrighty… MORMONISM. The ultimate con as it turns out. Here I thought they were trying to screw me out of a magazine subscription (the last one by). But they were trying to jack my eternal soul instead!

They asked if I had ever heard of their little church. I remarked “as it just so turns out I know more about your religion than you do”. They asked how that was possible, I told them because I study, because I find it fascinating that their religion is so new and young, but at the same time so big in number. It is a classic study in modern man and his need for religion in general and his not really wanting to know what goes on behind the curtain, but just wanting to believe whatever he is told, and then follow, follow the flock wherever it leads.

I told them I was very surprised to see girls instead of husky corn fed boys as per usual. It turns out the Oriental girl was Mongolian! What!? Well I see what the gig is for her already..hey pretend to be a Mormon and get a free ticket to America! What a scam, I know some others at work that did the same thing, hey I can’t blame them, it worked didn’t it?

Anyway she told me to have faith, the seed when planted if the fruit is good means the seed must have been good, right? I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the last time I heard the “look at the beautiful flower and see god” routine it was back in the 70’s and a Moonie was pushing it. Strangely, it seemed right for a Moonie, for here it seemed pathetic. I asked if she believed the lost tribes of Israel had migrated to South America? She said “you mean like the book of Mormon”? I said ..ah ..yes. She said no she hadn’t bothered to research that much. I asked if she would research buying a new car? “Oh yes I would” she gushed! I asked Isn’t her immortal soul more important than a car?

Right then as if on cue a cat walked past. Pinky the rambunctious black lab darted through for the attack! They said goodbye and left as I chased Pinky into the neighbors yard as Pinky wanted to discuss with ms. Cat her immortal soul. The girls proceeded to my gay neighbors house…..ah the luck…..