Things and Stuff

We grow attached to our things, over time.  Stuff grows on you.  Stuff piles up, especially in corners, or basements.  A garage, if left empty of parked vehicles, becomes a vacuum that sucks in stuff from all over, sometimes even other people’s stuff, which can be especially dangerous.

You can stuff a turkey, and the stuff with which you stuff it is called “stuffing”, and then, by the time the feast is over you put both hands on your belly and announce, “I’m stuffed!”  That does not make you a turkey, however.  What you said does.

So some stuff is good even if you’re not going to keep it very long, unless you forget it in the back of the fridge and it turns into weird stuff, or gloopy stuff or gross stuff, and it becomes bad stuff.  That kind of stuff is easy to be rid of.  Other stuff is more deeply attached, and harder to shake.

What kind of things do we tend to keep?  It’s different for each one of us.  Mostly, it seems like all those things have one thing in common, that they all have a story attached that explains why we still have that thing.  When the story attached to a thing falls away from that thing, as often happens when people die, the value disappears along with it, in many cases where the intrinsic value of the thing by virtue of it’s essence (think gold and silver) is not a shared thing.  In other words, if someone does not have a thing for that thing, it is nothing.  Does that even make sense?

But the main reason we love our stuff is because it’s our stuff.  We get to decide where to put it, how to protect it, and when and how to let it go.  We can write our names on it, or we can give it away.  We found it, bought it, stole it, begged it or otherwise obtained it because we decided we needed it, or it was a good deal and we never turn down a good deal, ideally.  And this is not to deny that some stuff shows up and you never quite figure out why or from where, like old broken kids toys or Styrofoam coolers split down the middle that all it needs is a dump run but who has the time right now to get around to it.  That kind of stuff is a drag.

And we like to do stuff with our stuff from time to time.  This is known as “doing my thing”.  That usually requires tools and expertise, if not just a large plate, so we tend to get more of those things that we need to do stuff with our stuff.  That is where the danger comes in, when we accumulate more stuff than we can store at any given time in our available space.  Or we bring in more things to which we plan to do stuff, but we can only do one thing at a time, so we wind up with too many things to do, mostly involving stuff.

I recall the story of the guy who owned too many vehicles, and he lived in a North Seattle neighborhood where parking was hard on the best of days, and when you saw the chalk mark on your tire it meant you had 24 hours to move that vehicle to a different spot.  So this guy was in so deep that once a week he would have to go out through the whole greater neighborhood and find all the cars, trucks and vans that he owned and, one by one, move them to a new spot somewhere else.  Quality of life tends to regress when we let our stuff get the better of us to the point of obsession.  It’s a bad thing.

I have philosophized in an earlier story that everything we possess has a hook embedded in our shoulders with an invisible line attaching us to that thing, and the more important that thing is to us, the stronger is that line and the deeper is that hook.  When things are ripped away from us against our will the hooks cause pain as they are yanked out, but the loss still has the effect of lightening our load a tiny bit.  But when we voluntarily exchange one of our things for money, or pass it on to an heir or give it to a good cause, we not only lighten our load, we lighten our mood as well, due to the relative heft of our wallet, or just the good feeling that comes with removing one more hook from our shoulders.

It is slowly coming clear to me as I get closer to that mythical checkout time that much of my stuff of which I am so fond may not be seen in the same light by whoever is stuck with getting rid of all that stuff if I’m not there to make sure it goes to the right person at the right price.  That’s why I have embarked on a project to lighten my load by finding a new home for some of this stuff.

Twenty-five or thirty years ago, when we lived in the same neighborhood as today, but a few blocks down the hill, we used to walk our dogs down the end of the block where the orchard used to be before the houses came in.  The old split cedar posts had rotted off at the base, and the last fifty feet or so of the woven wire fencing was coiled and tangled enough to be a problem, so I cut it off and coiled it up and brought it home, where it followed us here, because you never know when a nice chunk of spring steel fencing wire will come in handy, and there was a place on the garage wall where it hung all these years.  Well, just the other day I pulled down one of the remaining coils of this wire and gave it to a friend to reinforce a section of fence, which felt real good when I realized I had stored that wire for thirty years only to put it back to work doing what it was supposed to do, hold up a fence!  Now that is a good thing.

If I can only come up with something to do with all the rest of this stuff, that would be an even better thing.  :-{)}

Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Elizabeth Warren said at least one interesting thing during the debate last night, but failed to follow it to its logical conclusion.

She said, “Asking the military to solve a problem that is un-solvable by military means is putting them in an impossible situation.”  I agree.  But let’s look a little deeper.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan for whatever reason they used at the time, they quickly found out that they were in the middle of a hornet’s nest of tribal allegiances and feudal relationships that paid no attention to things like the United Nations.  The Russians lost their asses in the attempt, and part of the result was the fall of the SSR concept.  The USA, of course, being locked in cold war with Russia, slipped lots of money and weaponry to the guerilla opposition, who turned out to be conservative Islamic radicals for whom a martyrdom death was something to be looked for, and who became the Taliban after the Russians left, and quickly turned the country into an Islamic Fiefdom where Sharia Law ruled everything, and the warlords who controlled the various demesnes remained in power while the Taliban took over the government.

They in turn sheltered Al Qaeda and supported their goal of punishing the US for our previous transgressions in the middle east.  We pissed off the Shiites when we overthrew the President of Iran, and we pissed off the Sunnis when we jammed Isreal down their throats and took their land upon which to build it.  Now they all hate us, surprise, surprise.  At least we didn’t take all their land and put them on a reservation.

Underlying all of it is a well-known but mostly ignored tenet of all Islam, that the entire world is destined to become Muslim, no matter if they have to kill us all to get there.  The difference between the mainstream Muslims and the radicals is the mainstream guys are willing to wait for us to come around on our own, while the radicals have already started the killing.  They share many common beliefs, among them that a slaughtered animal must be killed by slitting its throat while it still is conscious and letting it die from loss of blood.

But back to Afghanistan, everybody knows or should know what will happen as soon as our troops leave the country.  The Taliban will come back into power and butcher the politicians, and the country will again fall back to feudal times.  Women will again become chattel slaves, the warlords will continue to sell the opium and have their dancing boys, and death will come quickly and easily for the slightest transgression.

So how is this America’s problem?  Other than the fact that we sorta caused the whole thing in our usual sneaky underhanded way?

The answer is, it’s not.  What we should do is pack up our tents and haul our asses and all of our weapons the hell out of that country and wish them well.  Or, maybe we should issue an M-16 and a case of ammo to every household in the country, then sit back and see who comes out on top.  Whoever that is will be the government of Afghanistan, if it doesn’t break apart into Persians and Kurds, or Sunnis and Shiites.

And remember the final scenes of the abandonment of Saigon, with the helicopters on the roof?  The only honorable thing to do in this situation is to invite every single Afghani citizen who fears life under the Taliban a visa to the USA.  Every single one of them.

What it really is is a United Nations problem.  Unfortunately, the leaders of the United Nations, the Security Council, have forced the will of the powerful minority on the helpless majority while the continuing exploitation of Third World resources for the benefit of rich First World elites goes on behind the scenes.

So the United Nations doesn’t have enough pull to make anything happen.  Every other country with troops on the ground or planes in the air needs to back the hell out of there, pronto, and let the Afghanis settle their own future.  If the Taliban wins, why would that not be expected?  Did we not invade them on the pretext of their hospitality to Al Qaeda and destroy their country with bombs, fighters and civilians alike?

After they settle down and get organized, they should provide us with a bill for the damage to their sovereign country, which we should promptly pay.  Sure, they’re assholes, and they treat their people like shit, and that offends us, but you know what?  They don’t think much of us, either.  We’ve spilled a lot of blood over there, and spilled blood carries memories that last a long time.

Many years ago, the British decided, “Piss on this, those rowdy Americans can have their damn colony, and to hell with ‘em!”  They came to this conclusion for a good reason.  We need to come to the same conclusion with Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Israel, and a whole bunch of other places.  It’s up to the people who live there to accept or reject their own government.  Anybody who steps in automatically becomes the enemy, and we don’t need to be the world’s enemy.  :-{)}

Truck Driver's Blues

I woke up early this morning, and reflexively reached for the alarm clock, but then remembered I didn’t do that alarm clock shit anymore.  I rolled out, sat on the edge of the bed, and grinned.  This new reality was going to take some getting used to, all right.  But it was a nice problem to have.

You see, I’m a truck driver.  Long haul is my specialty, and, like the song goes, I’ve driven “every kind of rig that’s ever been made” all over the USA, for the last twenty years or so as one of the best of the best, an owner-operator.

And the thing is, I’m still driving today - right now, in fact.  After I get some coffee in me I’ll turn on my laptop and find out where my truck is.  And that’s the thing that has me grinning to think about, the idea that my new truck is out there on the road right now, making me money with every mile that rolls under its fancy new individually powered wheels driven by electric motors supplied by the battery pack that sits up front where the engine used to be.  There’s no cab, of course, just an aerodynamic cover to maximize stability as it rolls along with a 70,000 pound load in the walking-floor equipped self-loading trailer, the wheels of which are also powered.  Electric motors having maximum torque at stall speed means the eighteen driven wheels can hum along at 75 miles an hour all day and all night, with stops at the service platform every 600 miles or so for a 15-minute battery swap.  And the real beauty of it, of course, is that, without an old grouch like me behind the wheel trying to grind out as many miles as possible in the limited driving time allowed for humans, my truck sits in the slow lane, happy to roll along as fast as traffic allows while still leaving plenty of room in front for entrances and exits, all while consuming zero diesel.

I understand some truck stops keep a fuel tank in the ground and an old pump, just for nostalgia sake and to keep some of the old Luddites happy, but the rest of them are now converted battery swap joints, while the few remaining restaurants are living on tourist and local traffic, and the whores, shoplifters, petty thieves and homeless beggars have long gone the way of ultra-low-sulfur diesel around here.  The UBI we enacted years ago, as it became obvious that most traditional “jobs” were going the way of the steam locomotive in the modern era, has removed the junkies and nut cases from our public areas and got them taken care of.  I’m still surprised that the Powers That Be were smart enough to realize that truck drivers were an essential part of our economy and society and passed the law that allowed one robot truck to each driver and awarded that person the total earnings from that truck.  Surprised, yes, but very glad they did, with a lot of pressure applied by everybody out here in the real world on the politicians we elected.  Just like every ironworker gets the money earned by their replacement robot, and every electrician and carpenter, too.

That reminds me, I have a meeting this afternoon with the neighborhood cleanup committee. We’re talking about rehabbing a couple of old service stations in the neighborhood with the help of the construction ‘bots and turning them into music hangouts.  We’ve got enough kids playing these days we can have a Battle of the Bands every Friday night for weeks without rotating the players.  The new playgrounds and ballfields we had to build when so many more parents had time to help with their kids’ Little Leagues and Junior Football games are starting to produce world-class talent, and the local schools, because so many of us have time for Booster Clubs and PTA stuff, are on a roll with the college applications going up all the time.

Looking back, I realize it was all worth the battle we started, to take back our country from the Robber Barons who controlled our lives for decades and stand on the principle of One Robot Per Person that has made it possible for everyone to be freed from the drudgery and grunt work that used to be inevitable, not to mention the idea that when you couldn’t work anymore you were useless trash to be tossed into the streets.  The funny thing was, and the way it worked out, that when you take economic pressure off people and provide them with the basics of life along with a path to do better individually, suddenly a whole bunch of crime goes away too.  It’s so obvious that criminals are driven either by the hunger of an addiction they can not control or the anger that a young, strong person feels as they realize that all the decks are stacked against them with no way out, it’s a wonder we were so greedy, those of us who had a say, that we didn’t realize that the obvious benefit that flows to the rich as well as the poor when society is stable and everyone’s needs are met is true security.  No more gated enclaves, no threats of kidnapping, no security cams everywhere, no slums, no neighborhood patrols, no guns going off in the night.  Sure, it cost the rich a big part of their cash at the time, but it’s not like they couldn’t afford it, and most of them now realize how much better off they are, too.  No Big Brother is a good thing, and they’re still rich, if not as much.

But it all started with the election of 2020, when we went into the voting booth and threw out the liars, the grifters, the cheaters, the demagogues and the party hacks on both sides and replaced them with people just like us, who listened to what we said and went and did what we wanted for everybody’s benefit.

And that’s why I’m grinning this morning, as I sit in front of my laptop watching through the remotes as my truck drops a load off in Chattanooga, Tennessee and picks up another one for Rhode Island somewhere.  I might go visit it next time it comes through town to pat it on the fender and thank it for the money that shows up in my account every week.  Yep, life is good here in the USA.  Raise the flag.  :-{)}

The Beggars of Toulon

The following observations stem from a trip my wife and I took to Europe a few years back.  My brother-in-law, the college history professor, had been hired to teach American History in English to a summer class of students in Hyeres on the French Riviera for a month, pre-pandemic, and we were quick to jump at the chance to join them in the 600 year old house they rented in Old Town.  It was a fascinating opportunity to experience old European culture from the inside, and prompted the story that you read here.

Beggars in Europe are different from beggars in America.  It’s almost like the Art of Begging is considered an honored profession over there, while here it is considered evidence of depravity or personal failings.  There, typically, the beggars sit quietly on the ground with their hands out, saying nothing.  Their targets are the pedestrians walking by.  Here they will be standing at intersections with hand-lettered cardboard signs, seeking funds that are handed out the window of a vehicle.

Even in Europe, there are differences between the various types.  Coming up out of the underpass after departing the Eiffel tower, we were confronted by a toothless old woman sitting on the upper step of the exit.  The crowd comes in spurts as the giant elevators disgorge their streams of tourists, and, when we came around that last corner, she went into a practiced routine where she rubbed her ample belly and cried out loudly, “J’ai faime!  J’ai faime!”, meaning “I’m hungry!”

Later, as we crossed the large open lawn of the Champs De Mars we were accosted by one of several young Roma women who wordlessly handed us a note written in English explaining that they were lost and in desperate need of funds and could we help them?  I noticed as I sent them away that there was always a young man in the vicinity, apparently wandering aimlessly.

When we went to the Sacre Coeur in Montmarte, as we got off the subway we were accosted by young men from North Africa who would take us by the hand and quickly braid a leather tie around our wrists in hopes of getting 10 Euros out of us afterwards.  The technique was to ignore our protestations and assume we would not punch them, which seemed to work, mostly.  I had to speak rather sternly to the young man who made the mistake of picking me, then I had to go rescue my wife from hers.

In the evening, if you were seated near the edge of a roped-off outside dining area attached to a bistro, it was not unusual to be approached by one or two elderly Roma women asking for funds.  The waiters would run them off quickly.

But in the South of France, along the Riviera, the beggars become different again.  We rode the TGV fast rail down from Paris to Marseille, then switched to a local train for the last leg to Toulon, and from there to Hyeres Les Palmiers, where we were based on this trip.  The name refers to the Casino that was the center of town, but we were up the hill in the old town.

On the train ride East from Marseille we shared a compartment with a group of young people, who were all laughing and talking like any other similar group on a vacation junket.  The funny thing was, they were beggars, a fact that was revealed a couple of days later when we came back to Toulon for an evening of touring and bistro hopping with my sister and her family.  As we walked through town, I saw that exact same group of young people sitting on the sidewalk in a busy intersection, but the difference was night and day.  On the train, they were laughing, joking around and having fun.  Here they sat in a disconsolate sprawl up against a building, their eyes downcast and their faces sad and quiet.  Their earrings had disappeared along with their jewelry, and they appeared to be the picture of poverty as the people passing by dropped an occasional coin or bill in their bowl.  It’s a living, I guess.

Of course, those experiences on that trip to Europe are separated from these days by more than a few years, and world events have no doubt changed the makeup of beggars all over the world as desperate people migrate from their homes in search of peace and security.  One thing does seem to remain consistent, though.  The people all over the world who are living in the street, where every day is a scrabble to survive, and satisfaction is only to be found in a needle or a bottle, those are the ones who are on the bottom rung of the ladder of life.  When times get tough, there are more of them, and when things improve, they get less visible.

They’re still there, though, and until we find a way to bring all of them up out of the gutter, everywhere in the world, we will never be completely able to relax.  There is no wall we could ever build that would keep them out if things got so bad that we thought it might.  And if it ever got to that point, it would be too late.  We would most probably join them, those of us that survived.  :-{)}

Story Time

My wife and I were both at a garage sale in the cul-de-sac kitty-corner behind us, where an elderly couple with a lot of history between them were lightening their load.  I snagged some very cool hand reamers in sizes I will probably never use, but they were so cheap, and some also very cool extension points for my lathe tailstock in graduated sizes, so I went away happy.  When you work with machine tools all your life you get where you just like to handle them and admire their precision and heft, all the more enjoyable knowing you don’t have to sweat and grunt over a T handle and actually use them.

My wife came home with a stack of old cookie tins, some quite faded and scratched up.  “Whatever possessed you to buy these?” I asked.  “Don’t you already have more than we need up on that shelf in the kitchen as it is?”  She laughed.  “You can’t have too many cookie tins, you know, and, besides, these have a cool story!  Apparently, they were among the residue of our elderly neighbor’s equally elderly Great-Aunt, who emigrated from the Old Country, and they’ve been kicking around ever since she passed.  She’s never even opened them, and some of them have stuff inside!”

I picked up the biggest one and shook it.  There was something inside, all right, but the lid appeared to be sealed with wax, and was resistant to being opened.  I took it out to the shop and clamped it down to the milling machine table with angle clamps, then proceeded to warm the rim with a heat gun until the wax liquified and I was able to gently pry the top off to reveal a very old, hand lettered diary, the text of which I now reveal to the world:

Jack and the Beanstalk:  After the Fall

Jack Spriggins is my name, and the following is a true and forthright account of what happened to me after I became famous following the chopping down of the giant beanstalk and resultant death of the giant himself, for which I was held liable.

I gotta be honest.  Some of those story-telling types made me out to be some kind of hero, where I called for my mother to toss me the axe, then chopped the beanstalk down just in time to throw the giant to his death.  Actually, I got away with the golden harp clean, and he didn’t find out it was gone for some days after I got home.  What happened was, I was outside one morning the next week, and I noticed that the beanstalk was shaking a bit on a regular basis as some very large feet were stepping carefully down what to him must have been a very shaky ladder.  That’s when I knew I had to chop it down, and it took most of the morning and into the afternoon, because the base was so thick.  The neighbors sawed great lengths of it for lumber, later, and when the giant fell he landed in the next county, so I wasn’t there for that.  Squashed a barn, he did, and two horses inside.

The beanstalk itself, as you would imagine, caused a lot of damage when it landed, wiping out fences and roofs for miles in a straight line.  When the shirriff followed the trail of destruction back to my place, there I was, with the axe in my hand, figuratively.

So a lot of the gold coins I got away with went to patch up the neighborhood, and a fair bit of it seemed to fall off into the hands of the various councilmembers and politicians in the process, but that was hardly a shock.  I did get to keep enough of it to pay off the farm and set my mother up for the rest of her life, and allow me to keep a wife and raise a mess of children over the years, so I guess you could say it worked out well.  I had to hire a team of soldiers to beat off the constant stream of shirt-tail relatives, scheisters and thieves, all coming at a run with their hands out, but that died down after a few of them lost parts of their bodies in the process, like the ones above the shoulders.

Then the Duke heard about the harp, and word quickly came to me that it would be a very good idea to grandiosely donate said harp to the Ducal Endowment for safe-keeping, which worked out well for him, until the Earl heard about it, and thence for him until the King got the story.  I was out the harp in any case, with no return beyond a few minutes of fame at a feast at the palace where I told my story in the short version before being escorted out the back door during the performance.  I was glad to leave with both ears.

And, of course, the Goose that laid a Golden Egg was not.  Not a Goose, that is.  It was a hen.  So the eggs were maybe a tad bit smaller than you would think they should be if it really was a goose.  Most of those were sold on the sly to a French family, the Faberges, and I never heard what they did with them.  I did get some pretty good money out of them, anyway, at least until the hen stopped laying, because it turned out she only did because they were feeding the chickens Golden Corn, and once that supply went away and the gold in her system was used up, the eggs were just decent brown eggs, like any other.  So one day we got hungry, and that’s what hens are for when they stop laying, right?

So, all in all, you might say I did all right because of the adventure.  I can’t help thinking about that place up there, and all that Golden Corn.  The giant must have had some relatives, because I understand one of them passed himself off as Jolly, and started a food company, but none of them have come looking for me, and that’s the way I like it.  :-{)}

Quora Question

What is your perception of Harley Davidson, Harley Riders, Harley owners and the Harley Culture?

Alan Brittenham, former Journeyman Machinist (1973-2014)

Answered just now

Me and my buddy Griz were standing outside a tavern on a warm summer night one time. Now, I’m a reasonably big dude, but Griz, well, he come by that name honest. He was a total cream puff, of course, with a heart of gold, but he did have a tendency to look the part. Black t-shirt, black leathers, black beard, big burly biker. Both our Harleys were parked on the sidewalk there.

So these two young guys came out of the bar to their bikes, a couple of Honda 750s, parked right close to us. One of them turned to us and said, “Hey, could I ask you a question? What is it about Harleys? I mean, everybody knows they’re slow, and heavy, and expensive. Why do people buy them?”

I took a slow breath as I formulated my answer. “It’s not about speed, or power”, I was gonna say. “It’s about how they make you feel when you ride them. There’s something about that big old engine, with two coffee cans going up and down one after another inside those huge barrels, that just comes out right. You can’t spin ’em too fast, and you don’t want to push ’em too hard, and they will carry you around like an old horse for years, and feel good all the time. And you can fix them yourself!”

“On the other hand”, I was gonna say, “there are so many levels of parts and expertise out there you can take any Harley and make it into one that your friends will recognize in the middle of that giant field outside Milwaukee in 2003, you can make it something that is yours, and yours alone.  You can make a show bike, restore an antique, pop wheelies, whatever you want!  

And ignore that shit about the “Harley Fraternity”, it’s not like that. What happens is, you get some time on the road, you run into some folks who ride similar bikes, you get to know them at the bar, you show up at a few meetings, you go on rides together, and before you know it you’re part of a brotherhood. You can’t do it on purpose. You have to earn it.”

That’s what I was gonna say, but, before I could get a word out, Griz took a step towards the young guy and growled, “Fuck You! Get on that piece of Jap Crap and get out of here before I kick your ass!” Both young guys did just that, amazingly fast.

I’m like, “Gawdammit, Griz, that was a reasonable question! You’re only pissed because that 750 will run circles around your shovel! I coulda talked them into showing up at the next Chapter meeting, maybe! You just gotta stop running off the young guys, or we turn into a bunch of old farts reminiscing all the time.”

Griz laughed. “Yeah, but fuck it. Let’s go back inside, have another beer.”

And so we did. And that’s how that shit happens. :-{)}