Hi. Well, lately I have felt like turning this blog into nothing but pet peeves and gripes. There are SO MANY things that are just annoying the hell out of me lately. Just lots of little things that are really irritating, from offensive menus at restaurants to veteran's day parade speeches to multiple flat tires to horrible customer service from DHL and Apple.

Why does it seem like there's so much of this? It has to be just me. I think it has to be that I am just in a general bad mood because of the 2 or 3 things that are actual major negative things in my life, and this causes me to notice and get pissed off about all this little stuff too.

The 3 things are: lack of money, no work, and no permanent place to live. I'm really getting very very broke. I really need to find some work. So far efforts have been proving fruitless.

I'll segue into one of the many related gripes now: I thought I was getting somewhere with someone at a headhunting agency who was looking for perl programmers in Tucson. But the guy was weird he seemed to only look at and answer his email once a day. WTF? what kind of Silcon Valley recruiter only looks at email once a day? Anyway he jerked me around for a week, asking for this or that tweak to my resume and then, as if it was the first time he'd seen it, he suddenly says, oh, sorry, they'll never want you for this perm job because you've been freelancing so long. they need proof that you'll stay for 5-10 years.

Such bullshit. First of all, what perl programmer stays at a fucking e-commerce gig for 5-10 years? Second, ok, that's fine, but at least tell me when i first send you my resume, not after we trade emails for 8 days. Lotsa luck, cabr

Two days ago I finally sent in my powerbook to get repaired, because the optical drive is completely broken. It's putting a damper on a lot of things to not have my computer. But in the past Apple has always been good about pretty quickly getting repairs done fast. And it's as easy as it can be - they send a box next day air via DHL, you put it in the box, call DHL for a pickup, it gets to them next day, they usually fix it in a day, and they send it back next day. So it's like 4 days usually.

Well, for some inexplicable reason DHL is taking 3 business days instead of 1 to get it to Apple. Plus there's a weekend in between. basically it was supposed to get to Apple yesterday and it won't get there till monday now. And DHL can't explain why. They just can't. It's just sitting at their sorting facility. Fucking bullshit. Apple, maybe you should think about switching to FedEx or UPS.

I recently read 2 very interesting articles about Venezuela by Christian Guerrero which look at the Chavez Bolivarian Revolution from a critical perspective I have not seen before. Christian is an activist Ecuadorian-American who lives here in Tucson and works with the Earth First Journal (which is based here).

One article is called "What's So Revolutionary About Venezuelan Coal?." The other is called "The War of 100 Years."

They're really worth looking at.

They remind me of an Eduardo Galeano essay, one of my favorite things he's written, called "Ser Como Ellos," ("To Be Like Them"), because they bring up a fundamental question in the ongoing global struggle of the rich against the poor, the rich countries against the poor countries: (To put it really simply) In this fight, is it the aim of the conquored simply to become like the conquerors? Or is there another way? A "third path?"

One of the big "issues" here in Tucson is of course related to the border, and the fact that many people who are prevented from coming to the U.S. legally look for other ways. Immigrants have crossed the border from Mexico illegally for a long time, but in the last several years border security has been tightened in all the places where it's easy to cross: the big cities and the more hospitable areas - leaving only the dangerous and hostile desert country. The U.S. government considers this a deterrent, but people still keep coming, and now are dying in record numbers as they try to cross the desert.

In Tucson there are many who oppose the government border policies, and many activists go out in the desert and leave water and food, or look for migrants in order to help them. This past summer, the situation came to a new level when 2 activists found some critically sick migrants and knew they had to get to a hospital. While driving them to a hospital in Tucson they were stopped by the Border Patrol and arrested. They're being charged with with one felony count of transportation of an undocumented person and one felony count of obstruction of justice., and the trial is set for December 20, I think.

Every year activists and community members have an 8-mile walk, carrying little white crosses, in commemoration of all those who have died. I went this past weekend and it was really amazing and moving.
Here's a short, completely unedited video I shot on my little still cam of local activist folksinger Ted Warmbrand, singing a song about the situation called "Who's the Criminal Here?"

This was at the end of the walk after a ceremony where the names of all the dead from this past year were read, and the crosses were placed in a big circle on the ground.

A subcommittee of the U.S. House of Reps has passed a resolution condemning the femicides in Juarez and Chihuahua City. If this goes further and is passed by the whole House and Senate, it could really help. Although it wouldn't be binding legislation, this sort of thing tends to put real pressure on other governments.

As I moved myself from Portland to Tucson I shot little video clips with my still camera, and now I've thrown together a quickly edited but entertaining little montage.



Hope you enjoy it.

links:
Jefferson state
Jefferson Public Radio
Sagan = Lesser + Bevin Blechdom + Wobbly
Negativland
bay bridge construction
TV Sheriff
on idleness

Just a brief entry to note that I have successfully arrived in Tucson, Arizona. Set out from San Diego this morning after a fine breakfast burrito at a nice cafe there, and about 8 hours later, here I am in Tucson. It has been warm and bright the entire day, with lots of rocks, mountains, dirt and sand. Staying with a friend from Arizona Indymedia.

There are skateboarders next door who look like they are building a half-pipe out of plywood and stuff, and having a lot of fun doing it.

Not sure what else to say yet. I'm still a little dazed from the road.

This photo i snapped in San Francisco the other day, outside of Sacred Grounds coffeehouse. I thought it was pretty appropriate.

Yesterday I drove from Vallejo all the way down to Los Angeles and met up with my friend Kevin and his girlfriend Babs at her house in Echo Park. We had dinner and then went to a performance of TV Sheriff, pictured here. It was pretty amazing. Lots of punk energy and yet very accomplished media manipulation. A really great combination of craziness and genius, basically.

Next we went to a halloween party that some LA Cacophony Society people were throwing, which was pretty cool. It was not one of those parties where a bunch of lame people come uncostumed - just about everyone had some kind of outfit, and many were pretty extraordinary.

We got back to Babs' house and she insisted on watching my Juarez doc, even though it was about 1 am. I was so tired I left them to it and went to bed. The next morning we went to brunch, and then I hit the road again and headed south to San Diego. Arrived at the house of Lotus, of SD IMC. Just from my brief stay here I have already met many amazing, active, creative people. I wish I could stay longer, but Tucson awaits impatiently. I hope to be there early evening on monday.

I'd like to write more but I'm too tired.

In the process of my drive from the northwest to the southwest, I have reached Vallejo, in the northeast corner of the San Francisco Bay. I got here 12 hours later than I expected, because I got a later start yesterday and so ended up staying in a hotel last night, in wonderful Redding, CA.

So I'm in Vallejo staying with friends Bob and Adrienne and their 1-yr old, Stella. Vallejo was always, to me and others familiar with the Bay Area, "the ugly suburb you drive by on I-80", but no one ever went there or knew much about it other than that. Well, now I know it's sort of charming and there's a beautiful historic neighborhood and a waterfront downtown.

they (the gringos, that is) pronounce it like 'val-ay-ho', when it should be, if proper spanish, "vay-ay-ho." might as well say "valley-jo" to completely anglicize it. heh.

Tonight I'm going with Bob to the Negativland show in SF. I'm excited about that because they almost never play live and I've never seen them live before. I've seen Mark Hosler a couple times solo, and the rest of the band playing as "The Chopping Channel," but not Negativland itself. And Sagan is opening. might be the last Sagan show ever.

For my continued electronic appropriation and culturejamming pleasure, I also plan to go see TV Sheriff when I'm in L.A. on Saturday. What good timing.

Might ride in SF's Critical Mass tommorrow, since I have my bike with me. It's Halloween so it would be advisable. But supposedly it is going to rain. hmm.

Well, today is the big annoying day, I'm loading up a car with everything and hitting the road. Going to get to the bay area tonite, stay there a few days, then down to LA for a day, then over to Tucson by Sunday evening.

It's exceedingly bad timing that my powerbook's CD/DVD drive just suddenly stopped working. A few hours before, it was fine. Then just when I go to burn some music CDs for the trip, bam, broken.

Of course, when is it ever good timing for your only computer to break? At least it's still in warranty. Just barely.