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Any point?
Spending a lot more time on myspace lately, and wondering if I should bother with this anymore. Anyone still reading this, leave a comment.
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Remembering Katrina
One year ago, in an interminable week of 24 hour news coverage, we watched in horror as tens of thousands of our compatriots suffered and died needlessly while our corrupt, self-serving, incompetent national "leaders" sat around making up excuses for their failure. Twelve months later, with national attention suddenly illuminating the ghost town that New Orleans has been abandoned to, those same incompetent, yet unaccountable miscreants are doing more of the same. Lest we forget how cruelly and inhumanly the wretched survivors of the broken levees (it wasn't the storm, it was the design flaw) were treated by their government, please watch this clip where Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith both lose their composure on live TV, dropping the pretense of journalistic objectivity in the face of monstrous pain and injustice. Corporate media these days are constantly manufacturing illusory drama to entice viewers, but true human feelings don't follow the script. If you haven't seen this clip before, I strongly recommend it.
I was moved at the time to make a little slideshow of my own. I don't know if I'm allowed to use any of the copyrighted material that's in it, so I never called attention to it. I added a link to dailykos.com because it's the main place where I go for an alternative perspective on the news and organizing resistance. I actually have a lot of respect for our Constitution and faith in democracy, but not enough people realize that a democracy of, by, and for the people must constantly be vigilant against the undermining influence of powerful elites, such as the ultra-rich corporate fascists comprising the Bush Regime. More and more people are waking up to this reality, or at least the reality that Republican rule has been an unmitigated disaster for the country, and a change is coming. But it won't come unless every citizen does their civic duty by voting and demanding accountability from their elected officials. You see, they are not our leaders. They are our representatives. We lead through them. If we fall asleep on the job, they are free to screw us over as they have been. Enough is enough. It's time to put some grown ups in charge, and we need your help to make it happen. Without the active participation of the electorate, there is no democracy, just a musical chairs game of self-serving snake-oil salesmen. We can do better, and it starts with educating ourselves.
Daily Kos
Truthout.org
Crooks and Liars
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doesn't help
The didjeridu workshop went well yesterday. I had six students-- six more than last time. I got lucky because somebody at the local newspaper decided to hype up my event in the weekend section of the paper on Friday. Instead just an event listing, they made it the featured event, which is where at least three of the people came from. Everyone learns the drone sound at a different pace, and all of them had trouble getting it, but I broke up the lesson with bits of history, wisdom, and sample recordings. I think it went well.
In other news, I am waiting for my new underwater video housing to arrive. It is delayed a week for a new part to come in. I'm looking forward to making dive videos, maybe selling promos for local boat companies. Meanwhile, I'm starting to do freelance videography for a local production company. My first assignment is shooting a hispanic chamber of commerce function on Wednesday. I'm learning how to work professional video and sound equipment, and later I hope they'll work with me on the Final Cut Pro editing software.
I'm doing a play at the Harbor Playhouse. Beauty and the Beast. It's a terribly stupid show, but if you ignore that, it's fun to sing and dance. I've got my eye on a cute latina in the cast, since Nikki inexplicably broke up with me 2 weeks ago.
Nevertheless, my morale is low and my attitude bad. I have no passion for life or faith in myself. Same old story from the past decade.
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Commandante es muerto
I really don't give a shit about blogging anymore, or even writing. Not sure why. Telling stories is just too much work now. Maybe I don't think my life is interesting lately. Or I can't write well anymore.
But I had some fun this week. My Ex, Vanessa came down from Houston for my didjeridu workshop on Saturday. I hadn't put any effort into promoting this one, and no one showed up, so it was a bummer. But I showed V and another friend a few things, and V kindly bought one of my painted didjes.
On Sunday morning we went boating with my parents, and I tried wakeboarding for the first time. No one knew how to get started on the board, so I just let them pull me a dozen times until I finally stood up, then I had a pretty long ride on it, going back and forth and getting used to it before I fell, then I was tired so we went swimming.
That evening V and I drove back to Houston and had dinner with her housemate Susana and some of her friends. We went to Cafe Japon, where I got a call during dinner from a fellow blogger, Digital Femme. She said she was unaware that I liked Japanese food. Having never met her before, I was amazed to find her eating in the same Houston restaurant as me just one table over. For two people like us, however, this was fitting. We were planning to meet the next night for dinner anyway.
The main reason I went to Houston was to check out the indoor climbing gyms. I went to Stone Moves in Willowbrook on Monday and the guys were really nice and answered every question I had about their business. I'm looking into opening a gym here in Corpus, so they were very helpful. They offered to let me climb around, but I planned to go later with V, and I didn't want to embarrass myself since I'm way out of climbing shape. And V and I both had colds and were miserable all week. We got to know Digital Femme better that night, and I played the didj for her and some of V's other friends, who were suitably impressed ;p
V and I were supposed to climb on Tuesday, but I took some of her Dayquil and felt so drugged I could barely drag myself out of bed by lunchtime. In the evening we pretended we were healthy and I took her to a capoeira class at the Brazilian Arts Foundation.
Commandante died on Tuesday morning. He was a parakeet that Susana was petsitting for a friend. He was due to be picked up that day, but he just couldn't wait. Her friend thinks that he didn't get enough attention so he tried to bust out and broke his neck. RIP.
On Wednesday I did more research at Texas Rock Gym, but I was running late so I didn't get a chance to climb there either before I left. Next time I really need to do some climbing. I made it back to Corpus in time to do some more capoeira, but my knee has been sore ever since.
I've been working on my diving website and handing out cards for that the past few days. The site still needs a lot of work, but it's coming along. I need to get in the water and take some more pictures or video. I hope to have an excuse soon.
And I've been playing the didj every night this week for meditation. I change notes every night to harmonize with a different chakra, and play for half an hour or more. If nothing else, it's good practice, and as they say, the path is the goal.
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This ain't so bad
I was a bit shocked by the changes they made to the software here, but so far it's been great for me. I regained access to my old blog that I had tried and failed to delete, and was able to change the name and make this the new primary blog (address changed to /bangatank, dropping the 2.) Too bad I've had no interest in blogging lately, but that's the way it goes. Today was my last day of work at the turtle lab. It's been a really slow couple of weeks, hot and calm with no nesting turtles anywhere. My main task this week was the labeling of little 2ml vials for unhatched egg samples. I had to label 2 sets of 20 vials for all 77 nests found so far. That's 3,080 vials. I started sometime Tuesday, spent at least half of each day on them and finished at 3 pm today. See, that's why I didn't become a scientist. Too much rigor. But I was off by myself in another building where I could listen to my podcasts and call Nikki if I got bored. I even took a few brief naps when necessary.
Emotionally, mainly upbeat about the change. It was actually a pretty cool job, paid well, low stress, variety of tasks, but it got tedious at times. I should have prepared more for diving while I was working there, and gotten my business card printed by now, but I was hoping to work with the local shop first so I could see how it was done around here. Turns out his business is going slowly, so I'll have to take some initiative.
I'm doing another didjeridu (new preferred spelling) workshop on the 24th of June. I've got some good ideas for new paint jobs I want to do, and now I'll have time to do them. Hopefully more people will show up for this one. I'll probably have to get a regular job for now, but I'm going to start doing research on the rock gym business. Now I have to go reset my links.
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