The turn of the tide...

Damn you facebook! I find it very difficult to post here when it's so easy to fire off a quick link of pithy note. If they allowed longer posts I might abandon blogging entirely, as so many other have done. Google plus allows long posts, but it doesn't feel quite right. Something is off and I can't put my finger on it.

Anyway...

I'm thinking of going to New York to join the Occupy Wall Street protests. It seems to be gaining momentum, not slowing. Of course, Winter is approaching. I can't see this lasting long after the first snowfall. And what exactly are the demands of this movement? They are many I'll grant you. Even if some kind of miracle occurred and Wall Street could somehow capitulate to this movement, what would we ask of them? And yet I still feel a need to be a part of this. I want the multinationals, the global banks and our elected leaders to know that I am right pissed. I don't want to take their money by force. I do not want them destroyed. I want the government to stop letting banks continue to create and profit from convoluted and risky financial instruments. I want banks to be responsible lenders. I want strong oversite of these weasels. I'd like the wealthiest 1% of Americans and the multinationals to pay a little more in taxes. I'd like our government to stop attacking labor unions.

That's it.
I don't want to overthrow capitalism. I don't want to eat the rich. I don't want to destroy banks.I do not want to become part of an angry mod. I'd just like to see some goddamn common sense at the higher levels of business and government. Looking at that sentence I can see that this could be a long wait. I suppose that's why I want to go. I want to help push things along. I want to stir the pot.  I want to make people think. I want to rattle some cages.

On the other hand, I do NOT want to get maced or beaten with a baton or arrested. Is this movement worth the risk of those things?

A hell of a balancing act.

Right now I am really struggling to keep my brain from assploding. This season has been a pretty good one, but things can change pretty quick. Right now, I am facing a critical lack of shit to sell. I ordered stuff. I ordered a LOT of stuff. Stuff I PAID for. Stuff that was supposed to get to me in a timely manner. But that shit isn't happening.

 So I wait. In the mean time I loose a minion who I was counting on. Another minion seems to have forgotten that she committed to working for me and seems to be wandering off like a toddler with ADD. Seriously, what the fuck? I call an old worker who says she can help. Great. I need to know what dates are a problem. A goddamn WEEK passes. We live in the fucking information age. How hard is it to look up your schedule?

My blood pressure starts to skyrocket. Then I see that friends of mine was in an accident coming back from Dragon Con. They are ok. This is good. It easily could have gone very bad. I go outside and start mowing the lawn. The air is cool, not the 90-something of the past week. I clear my head. There are more important things. I calm down. I'm still pissed. I'm still backed up with shit to do. But I will force myself to chill out a little and try to keep some perspective.

Like a barren desert.

So long since posting... Face book and now on Google+ (which doesn't seem to have as many functions as facebook. No events? No instant messaging in the app?  I don't think anyone I know is still blogging.

So alone...

Anyway. Back from Pennsic and other events and eager to get into the shop to do some cool stuff. I just need some time to do it. I did try today. The mower ran out of gas but the van needed to be unloaded and then reloaded. I got out to the shop for a little while, but then I remembered I had to get some paperwork done and pay sales tax to Indiana. Always fun that.

Spent 1/2 an hour trying to find some bronze bits I bought at Pennsic with no luck. Crap, I better unpack that shipment of skirts and get rid of those shipping boxes.  Hey! There's those CD's I bought from that funny guy! Oops, time for dinner. Wow, we recorded a lot of stuff while we were gone.

Productivity= 0

Of well, tomorrow is another day.

An uncomfortable feeling.

I'm playing a new game called Far Cry 2. Unlike Massive Multiplayer games like World of Warcraft or First Person shooters this game has a HUGE open world and no rigid plot. You can go wherever you want. Despite the game being a few years old its still gorgeous. And the developers did a great job of keeping the game mechanics hidden. No heads up displays. To look at the map you physically pull out a map. Same with getting in and out of cars. All smoothly animated. It helps keep the world feeling real. There's changing weather and cycles of day and night. If you are injured you have to stop and perform first aid on yourself.

  And while all that is great I'm having a hard time continuing the game. It's set in a fictional African Nation in a brutal civil war. I've been sent in to kill "The Jackal". A shadowy arms dealer supplying both factions. But in the process of gathering intel I am forced to work with both factions doing fairly horrible things. Destroying important infrastructure, assassinating citizens and political leaders. Yes, some of them are corrupt, but others...who can tell?  Arms dealers hire me to knock off competition. An occasional phone call from a faceless voice sends me off to kill someone without any context of who they are.There seems to be an underground attempting to get people out of the way of the fighting, but helping them does nothing to slow the conflict.

 Yes, it's just a game.  I've killed thousands of mutants, aliens, zombies and faceless soldiers in other games. This is different. The militias wear no uniforms. Mercenaries roam the countryside.  They speak in thick South African accents and seem to delight in the conflict and the money they are making. (The local currency is uncut diamonds, another nod to an all too bloody reality of Africa) It all strikes a little too close to reality.  I'm not very keen to keep going on missions for these thugs that are partnered with or controlled by foreign mercenaries.

It's Deja Vu all over again.

It seemed a little odd getting a call from my father. We had talked only a few days ago. He seemed up and chipper. We chatted about this and that. Then he let me know that he's had another motorcycle accident. You may recall that last year, en route to Bag End, my Dad dropped the bike and broke his clavicle. It also messed up the bike quite a bit. He's spent mush of the year tinkering with it and has been riding again over the past few weeks.

 He was riding with another Pacific Coast rider when the guy in front stopped at a yellow and Dad had to hit the brakes suddenly. He stopped fine, but  the bike tipped and when he put his leg out to stop the 700 pound bike from going over, he broke his ankle.

He'll be laid up for 6 weeks. The bike took a few nicks again. Our respective wives have engaged in some gratuitous eye rolling. There is some distinct muttering, My Dad is 73. Should he be riding at his age? Are his reflexes up tot he task? Last year I said "No problem". Everyone who rides WILL have an accident (likely several). This is a FACT.Having an accident in a car doesn't mean you stop driving does it?

 But I cannot help but be a little worried. Time robs of of our facilities by inches. At 73 you just don't bounce back from injuries. Maybe he should listen to assorted friends and relatives, play it safe and give it up.

Or maybe everyone can just shut their mouth. The man has been riding for decades. On all kinds of bikes. That's an ass load of experience. I won't be the one to tell him to stop doing something he loves. It's possible continuing to ride will kill him. I'd be especially depressed if the accident that ends his live hurts others. But having just watched my wife's father meekly shuffle off the mortal coil I would argue that anything is better than "the straw death" as the Vikings called it.

Suck with a side of suck.

The cool thing about having a blog is that you can vent your spleen and save thousands on therapists or lawyers fees. It's been a while since I've posted but, y'know, I've been busy and shit. Working...and stuff. And then there's the dreaded facebook, which makes it so easy to just toss out a quick line or pithy statement or link. No depth.

Anyhoo I'm getting ready for MarCon. Rossana will be at Virginia. Both shows are going to suffer because I'm low on corset stock. I shouldn't be. But I am. Once again my supplier has dropped the fucking ball. Admittedly, I dropped a huge order on him. But I did it 6 weeks ago. And what do I have so far? Seven corsets. Seven.

Calls were make, some bad language was used. Excuses were made. Yadda yadda yadda. I'm sick of it. I want my stock. I want to be able to sell corsets. I'm pretty good at it, but I can't sell what I don't have. Luckily about half our sales come from smaller, non-corset items now. Thanks the gods. If I had to rely solely on high end corsets I'd be in a world of hurt.

So to beef up my supply of non corset stuff I spent the last two weeks in the shop with my friend Tony working hard. Any time the rain let up I'd try to get out and clean up the yard. Stuff got made, but not as much as I'd like. I also haven't had time to make any new stuff. Maybe next week. I so want to learn leather tooling.

With luck and hard work we'll make some sales this weekend. Also training up 2 new temp minions. I need people I can call on to help at shows if needed like this weekend. Both are great girls so i think it will work out well.

A victim of our own success.

It didn't take long for the mentally challenged among us to start with the "If Osama is really dead, where's the PROOF?" chorus.

Really? The president of the US of A tells you we killed him. We have pictures and do a DNA test. But despite the fact that faking or lying about something like this would be monumentally stupid the question remains.Where's the proof?

But lets hold on a second here. Maybe these idiots are on to something. They are doubting their leaders. They are doubting the mass media. They are asking questions. And while they are doing it for all the wrong reasons they are showing signs of rudimentary skepticism. A skepticism we really could have used, say, 10 years ago.

Back then, we took the government at their word. We took political leaders at their word. Not about everything, they were still politicians. But in matters of national security and the act of going to war, well, that's some serious shit. You don't fuck around with that kind of thing. You get your smartest people together and think real hard before pulling the trigger, so to speak.

But we didn't do that. Did we? We somehow associated Bin Laden with Iraq and then ignored reality and all kinds of experts by making Saddam Husein a nuclear armed super genius with his finger literally on the button. We went to war and then brought in morons to oversee reconstruction. We poured billions of dollars and thousands of lives into that pit.

We declared war on a concept.  We passed the patriot act. We created the TSA. We did these things to help us be safe. We did these things because we were told it was necessary. Then the cracks started to show. Were there WMD's in Iraq? Yes! (No) Did the phone companies pass info to the government without warrants? NO (Yes). Did the Bush admin out a CIA agent? No! (Yes)  Are the prisoners at Gitmo being tortured? NO! (Yes), Did we get good intel? Yes! (No)  Were the prisoners at Abu Garaib tortured? No! (Yes) Are there secret CIA black sites where rendition victims are taken and tortured? NO!! (Yes).

Are you seeing a pattern here? The fact is we were misled or outright lied to about some pretty huge things over the past 10 years. By our leaders and by our government. And that may have finally trickled down to the unwashed masses.  Maybe that's why some people question Obama's birth certificate. And maybe that's why there's a cry for graphic proof of Osama's death. Because we simply can't trust the people we put in charge to tell us the truth. Even on simple things like "This guy is dead".

And that is a sad state of affairs.

The print on the page...

Yesterday we visited the Guttenburg museum. We had to endure a truly awful walking tour with a Fin who didn't speak very good English to get there. The cool part was that I got to take part in a demo of a Guttenburg screw press. She was a beauty. Printed out a page from a Guttenburg bible in 3 colors on good quality Amalfi paper.

Upstairs in their treasury they had several amazing books including 2 original Guttenburg Bibles. Each was slightly different as their owners had requested extra illumination to decorate some of the pages. They said it was hard to estimate their value but it was certainly in the millions. Depite being such an important figure a lot about his life is unknown. Although it does seem he was a terrible businessman. Several lawsuits and a few unpaid loans. He did gain some status later in life but didnt live long enough to enjoy it. The museum also has a wing dedicated to the Chinese, who, contrary to what I had learned, also developed some movable type (although impractical due to Chinese being a pictographic language requiring thousands of blocks). I knew they had done block printing, but movable type was a surprise.

We dumped the latter half of our walking tour to go back and just gawk at the amazing presses and books (both hand written and printed). When we left I noticed a print shop next-door to the musuem that appeared to be associated with it, but there was no time to find out for sure.

Although there is no evidence to supporso such a thing, I sometimes get a strong feeling that I was somehow associated with printing and books in some previous life. It's uncanny.

The bonds of the sea

Last night we officially began cruising on the Main river. The ship is almost silent and very little disturbs it. We are travelling down river and this requires passing through a number of locks. After dinner I went up on deck as night fell and witnessed this process first hand. The First and Second captain (there are three) were sipping drinks which alarmed me at first.I mean this IS Germany and they do drink a lot, but apparently their shift was over and they were just relaxing before going below. The third Captain wasnt actually in the pilot house. He was posted at a set of controls port side. There is a matching set starboard. Although the ship is fairly narrow there is no room for error in entering the locks.

As the ship moved forward the captain made dozens of small adjustments using bow thrusters. Inside the pilot house a mate and a sailor watch the radar and use binoculars to keep an eye out for obstructions and other craft. Not only is the ship a tight squeeze side to side but top to bottom. Some of the locks and bridges are so low that the pilot house and a sun screen must be lowered in order to make it underneath them. This was done as we entered the lock. The pilot house lowered about three feet into the body of the ship.

About five of us male passengers stood on deck for this, despite the cold. A woman popped up top and asked what we were doing looking so intense.

" We are sharing the bond to our seagoing ancestors" I said.

"What?"

"We're ready, at a moments notice, to unfurl sails, or heave to on the mainbrace. Should there be call, we will waltz the capstain and climb the mizzen."

The woman looked at us like we were mad, shivered, and went below.

The man folk kept our vigil.

"Does this ship have any of those things?" asked the man next to me, as we narrowly passed below a gangway on the lock.

"No. But but thats not the point, is it? We could."

All aboard.

We have left Prague behind. I wish we could have had at least 1 more day to explore. We boarded a bus and drove to Nurenburg, a walled city we have visited before. It being Sunday most of the shops were closed but there was a market day in the town square. Sausages and kraut!

We had an all too short walking tour of part ofnthe walls before rebounding the bus and driving past the buildings were the post war Nazi trials were held. Then we visited the massive parade grounds were the glory of Nazi Germany marched by their Messiah. These must have been awesome and terrible sights to behold. Today, the stands where Hitler stood are crumbling away and the encircling spectator stands are mostly overgrown except for one corset which is apparently a soccer field. The area around and in front of the stands is a park where people rollerblade, play with RC cars and show off their motorcycles and pimped out rides.


We left Nuremburg and finally arrived in Wurtzburg to board our ship. Our cabin is a small and efficient affair. Two single beds. A bathroom that doubles as a shower. We are right above the water line which is freaking Rossana out a little bit. Our fellow travelers are, for the most part, an older lot. But interesting. There's a couple from Cuban I'm keen to speak to.

Today we will visit the Residence palace and then take an excursion to Rothenburg, one of my favorite cities. Last time we were here, we abandoned our group and spent the day enjoying the city and the medieval market. Alas, we can't do that today as we need to get back to out boat before it leaves without us.

Prague

We arrived if fairly good shape thanks to
Air Canada. From Frankfurt we had a short flight to Prague. Lufthansa does not fuck around when they fly. I swear we tAxied at 30 mph. As soon as we hit the main runway Bam we were off like a damn shot.

By the time we made it to the hotel I was getting shaky. I never sleep on planes so I'd been up quite a while. Crashed for a few hours before going out and
Exploring.

Prague is a lovely city I wish we had at least another day. The Old Toen is very picturesque. Everything is decorated for Easter. Lots of temporary food stalls serving all kinds of tasty dishes. Visited the old Jewish quarter but being Saturday everything was closed. Many of the synagogues here are now museums. After the war only 3% of the Jews returned.

Up up and awaaaaaay.

We head out soon and the first issue I'm going to have to deal with are the new scanners at the airport. This is our first trip since their installation and since the entire project has been a fiasco that has proven to be unreliable (and potentially less safe than claimed) I have decided that if possible, I will opt out.

I've been patted down in several countries. But only in America do people tell of having TSA agents shove their hand down your pants. I'm not cool with that. But rather than complain without any experience I'm going to see how things are run in Cleveland. It's not a good statistical sample but hey.

The interesting question is whether I'll actually do it. There's something called Implied Authority Syndrome. It states that most people will do something if they think someone in authority is telling them to do it. So when a person in a semi-police looking uniform tells me to step into the scanner will I say no, or chicken out?

Wow

I posted this earlier but its worth watching actual video of this amazing tool chest.

Wrecked

I just started to read this thread over at Reddit.com  I couldn't get all the way through it. Couldn't see the screen through the tears.

It was nice to see people giving well wishes from all over the world to a person who could no longer travel the road. I'm gonna go tell my wife I love her now.

Good.

Shawna Ford was found guilty of murder. Good.  She is a crazy and evil person. She shot several people she thought were illegals so that she and her crazy Minute Man friends could take jewelry and hopefully drugs to finance MORE killing.

So what separates her from the other mouth breathing brown-people hating Neanderthals out there screaming about the evil Gub'mint, socialist Muslins, takin away tar gunz and the rest of the lexicon of crazy?

Not much really.