Point of no Return

This is me taking an air hammer to my house. This seemed like a good idea at some point. The theory is to round the edges of the doors and windows so that when the stucco is applied we soften everything up a little. Knowing this doesn't make it any easier to take a chisel to a perfectly good brick wall. I mean, I'm past the point of changing my mind here. That ship has sailed.


Then there are the repairs to the roof. When the orginal repairs were done, a huge industrial strength ruber sheet was installed to prevent leaking. Alas, it wasn't installed quite right. When we get too much rain, the water creeps over the edge of the ruber and seeps into the cinderblock leading to small leaks. But small leaks take their toll. Plus the material doesn't drain away from the house enough and the topsoil isn't thick enough by our garage. So we're digging, adding new material, sealing it, covering it and laying new topsoil. Joy. The first job was so close, but just didn't get it right. Everything about this house is a learning experience, sometimes a painful one. The good news is that they're bringing over a kind of mini Bobcat front loader. I'm hoping to get them to level out some of the pits in the yard and clean up by our burn pile. I very much doubt they will let me operate this machine, but a man can dream can't he?

New Orleans Redux

I'm still writing up my recallections of Pirate Con in New Orleans last week, some of it is understandably a litle blurry. I didn't see any of the 9th ward this time, although I did find an old friend who I'd lost track of who now lives there with his wife. They spend six months in their own house while they gutted and rebuilt it. They had water but no official power. They hooked up an extension cord to a neightbors house. That's hard core.

So what do I read today? That most of the foreign aid for Katrina victems was uncollected, refused or wasted.

Do you know what a lot of the attendees did early morning Saturday at Pirate Con? They went to a grade school in the area with much needed school supplies. $60 million dollars and it isn;t getting to where it needs to. This is what makes my brain hurt.

People laugh at Denis Kusinich for trying to get Cheny impeached. Why is this crazy? If anyone focused on any ONE of the disasters this administration had been either responsible for or has exacerbated, they would quickly come to the realization that we and our country are being forced into a flaming nosedive by a corrupt idiot. It's just that there are SO MANY fuck-ups, mistakes, miscaculations, missteps and wrong turns thay we just can't catch our breath. You can't keep up! Is that their strategy?

BONUS ROUND

It seems seven of eight "Successes" in Iraq in fact, aren't. Have a read. Your money and blood at work.