Brrrr

Like the curse of some petty Witch, today I can't manage to get in warm water for a good scrub.

First I fill myself a lovely hot bath, and have to tip it all away, because I lost track of time and had to leave for work. Later, somewhere else, the water runs cold, and upon trying the electric shower, MORE cold water comes out.

I managed to get the crappiest and least satisfying of washes, only to get back into dirty clothes.

I'm cold and I smell like some bomb ass cabbage. :(

Gears

I'm not an intelligent person. I know intelligent people. Their minds are like powerful engines. Mine is two-stroke at best, but it's unusual in a few respects.

I have loose gears in there, bright, polished gears, rootless, attached to nothing, spinning in perpetuity. This constant motion contributes nothing to the economy or the horsepower of the machine. They dazzle, spin, and like any mechanical mystery, they're capable of amusing intelligent, interested people, at least for a while.

Like a Newton's cradle, the novelty soon wears off. They defy any attempts I might make to harness them. When I try to marry their teeth with anything of utility, they fail.

Burroughs wrote about a man who taught his asshole to speak. "His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard." I've heard that this was a political point. I think it's about cultivating yourself in a vacuum. Outside of a school or a job. It's as indeterminable as teaching your asshole to speak, and eventually, those asshole second-order thoughts BECOME you. It's scary and pointless.

Never, ever try to be an autodidact. You may as well teach your asshole to speak. It's like Mister Miyagi said, you do Karate yes, good. You do Karate no, okay. You do karate 'guess so?' WHAM. Stay in school, kids.

Things what are happening

- I have to take two weeks off work soon, for some arcane bloody payroll related reason, as I switch from a Casual into true Wage-Slavery.

- I have a new record player console type thing. It makes a lot of very erotic "chunk-chunk" type sounds as parts whiz around and records drop onto the turntable. It doesn't always sound too hot, and messing with the volume screws up the sound balance, but that's likely fixable, and really, the thing is such a nice, utilitarian "bit of wood" to have around as a console that it'd pretty much be worth what I paid even if it were non-functioning.

- WISCONSIN IS BURNING! - At least according to Fox. What's actually happening is; a bunch of labour protests are going on as Governor Scott Walker plans to increase the insurance contributions payable by State employees. People are, understandably, protesting in Madison. Glenn Beck is calling it a sign of the coming Apocalypse, Fox is calling it "Civil Unrest", Walker's threatening to "Call out the National Guard", (which evokes Kent State to my mind, for no good reason.)

People are mostly pissed because in the immediate wake of his getting elected, Walker gave out a lot of tax breaks, including slashing tax on Healthcare contributions, and is now using the state deficit as justification for "emergency" economic measures. It all sounds a little Naomi Klein via "the Shock Doctrine", to me. The parsimonious explanation seems to be that he's acting out of ideology, nobody seems to have forced his hand.

- I'm doing a slack assed job of the dishes. It's the best way to do them, really. The hot water keeps running out. If I piss around with the internet and my new music machine, and generally take all day, it gives the tank time to refil. it's also quite pleasant.

TOODLES