Thursday 27 October 2005 - LOAF AT MARSHA'S!
Layover in Oro Valley AZ
Dave is such a good dad. He washes and feeds and scoops up after Bruce's lizards. Would YOUR dad wash your lizards? Probably not. And lizard shit stinks. Whew. Hey, is anybody out there in the market for a couple of big bearded dragons?
The work crew gets here early and digs the swimpool. Dust is in the air. The dogs are excited. The backhoe is loud. Maureen wants her own backhoe. I suggested that she get a heavy-equipment job. Right. The day proceeds. Dave levels the excess dirt. We beg off with road-weariness and dust aversion.
Bruce returns from school wearing a werewolf head. He says they're studying Greek mythology. I said he should have worn a toga instead. He said one student came as Aphrodite. No pictures. Ratz.
I cook an easy Italian dinner. Everyone seems to approve. No dogs were sacrificed. More chatter; but enough of that. We go to Bisbee tomorrow, without the lizards. Now I just have to kick off the BRING IT TO BISBEE campaign.
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Friday 28 October 2005 - BACK TO BISBEE!
Tucson to Bisbee AZ - get to work now
That sonofabitch George in Beaver UT! That sonofabitch sold us costly tires, said they were Coopers. The name Cooper appears nowhere on the tires or receipt. So when we pull away from Marsha and Dave's and stop to reprovision and notice that a tire (bought EIGHT DAYS AGO!) is flat and we check with the local Cooper dealers; nobody will do warranty work. And it turns out that the valve stems were installed incorrectly. Putzes, and unethical too.
WARNING!
Do NOT buy tires/shocks from:
Mineral Mountain Tire
1392 North 300 West
Beaver UT 84713
435.438.5031
Fortunately, we weren't charged for re-installing the valve stems. We extend our thanks to the guys at Discount Tire.
Hey Marsha: I know you like to shop at Trader Joe's, on Oracle at Magee. You might also check out Wild Oats, on Oracle at Ina — you may find it suitable. And the store I mentioned on Golf Links at Kolb is 99¢ ONLY. Gas is cheap around there too, 15 cents less than in your neighborhood.
EARLY AFTERNOON: We're leaving Tucson. The tire situation was less painful than we feared. And we did want to make a stop in Nogales on this trip but we're too tired for it today, and will be too busy this weekend, so maybe we'll hit it on our way out. ?Quien sabe?
In keeping with our policy of avoiding freeways, we get off the interstate as soon as we could and take the scenic route through Sonoita, a whole five miles extra. Visually and emotionally much better. And at current fuel prices it only costs $1.25-$1.50 for the detour.
So, through Sonoita Pass and Huachuca City and Sierra Vista, the off-post town for Fort Huachuca. Here we pick up our house-repair supplies; and we should have waited to buy gas here, it's even a dime less than the cheapest we saw in Tucson.
LEWIS "SCOOTER" LIBBY was indicted today for lying, perjury, and obstruction of justice, in a case of political action to suppress revelations about the Bush administration's false justifications for the Iraq invasion. Mr Libby, his boss Dick Cheney, and his mentor Paul Wolfowitz, were leading architects of the Iraq invasion. The indictment states that Mr Libby's actions, which involved 'outing' a CIA agent, damaged national security.
(Please note that most major champions of the invasion [and their kin] managed to avoid military service or combat themselves. They are known as ChickenHawks, ie cowards.)
Bush's team announced in mid 2001 that they would lie about war. (Then-Solicitor-General Olson argued before the Supreme Court that in cases of national security, the administration was not required to be truthful.) Lying is official Bush policy. In case you didn't notice, the justifications for the Iraq invasion were lies. Those who wage unjustified war, commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Bush team are war criminals. Remember that.
(But some folks *like* war criminals. Aren't they much more interesting and exciting than boring, namby-pamby, harmless honest people?)
Was Libby a "lone wolf," leaking and lying all on his own? Unlikely, given the team's top-down tightly-controlled nature. Was Libby encouraged to leak by his boss Cheney? Probably. The Bush team was quite willing to damage national security while playing domestic political games. The team works to benefit itself, nor Americans.
(Bush team strategies work to benefit major oil producers, not the American people. See my notes on ENERGY INDEPENDENCE.)
The Bush team present themselves as intrepid champions of national security. They are lying. Their war breeds terrorists, kills and maims thousands of US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and makes it increasingly difficult for US citizens to go out into the world.
(What, politicians LIE?? I'm SHOCKED!! Of COURSE politicians lie. And why should Americans bother to see the world? Stay home, spend your increasingly worthless money right here.)
The Bush team have committed high crimes. Contact your political representatives and say one word: 'impeachment.'
(While the GOP owns the Senate, there won't be any impeachment. Wait until after the 2006 elections. Things could get interesting then.)
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Monday 31 October 2005 - WORK IN BISBEE!
Reoccupying the ancient Toland Adobe
SATURDAY: We calculate the trip. From home in Sierra Nevadas to home in Bisbee, 85 days and 7268 miles equals 85.5 miles per day. Whew. Now we start patching the retaining walls. Whew. Meanwhile, we have some complaints for the house agent, but y'all don't Need To Know.
SUNDAY: We take a short break, stroll around Old Bisbee to refamiliarize ourselves. The Bisbee Shuffle: so many shops have moved, so many old favorites are gone: Bisbee Internet Cafe, Daily Diner, Western Photography. Not that we ever patronized them much. We're told that meth freaks lose their teeth after losing their minds; is this true? [YES]
MONDAY - Hallowe'en: More work, but hooray, everything we NEEDED to get done by the end of October is DONE. We celebrate by buying me a hockey mask (US$2.00) to add to my ugly wrestling shirt so I can be a chainsaw murderer tonight. The party is at the old jail. How appropriate. Meanwhile, our long distance service won't be on for another few days, so don't expect any calls right away.
CHANGES IN BISBEE: Bisbee consists of 1) Old Bisbee, steep and twisty, set in sharp canyons; 2) Lowell, mostly devoured by the Big Pit; 3) Warren, a fan-shaped old development in a rounded valley; 4) San Jose, down in the flatlands just above Mexico; 5) a smattering of other miner-shack boroughs. Here's what we've seen:
Old Bisbee looks a little tidier (except for tall weeds) and more money has obviously circulated here — some properties are going for twice the price of 18 months ago. Brewery Gulch looks a little scruffier in places, upgraded in others.
Lowell is about the same, cleaner than when it was a Stephen King movie set. Maureen thinks Warren looks a little better but I didn't notice. San Jose looks about the same, but more development is coming. So overall, some shuffling, but not a lot of change in the five months since the beginning of June.
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Tuesday 01 November 2005 - HOLY BISBEE!
All Saints' or None?
Bisbee is very quiet. We suspect massive recuperation after a weekendful of festivities. We missed all but one party last night, at the OK Street jailhouse. On the streets we passed KISS, lions, mariachis, various of the undead and unmentionables. At the party were Betty Boop, an Angel of Death, Red Riding Hood & the Wolf, Scary Mary (our realtor), Vincent Price, and some foul little hairy creature and its keeper. We missed the marching band (without instruments), the transvestite bar-hopping society, the leather nuns, and Wally the Wizard. But today the streets are filled with motorcycles. We're torn for the next year at this time: get to Bisbee a few days early to have strength to witness more, or head south to imbibe a real Dias de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)??
DEAD ILLEGALS: A local controversy swirls around Good Samaritans charged with human trafficking because they tried to transport sick or injured UDAs (undocumented aliens AKA illegals AKA wetbacks) already in the US to medical facilities. Hundreds of those crossing the border here die annually, stuck in the harsh desert. Under a recent Border Patrol regime, humanitarian intervention was OK. And now it isn't. What a difference a month makes. See NoMoreDeaths.org for more.
So, what's right? Should illegals be left to die? Sure. Why? Here are some possible reasons:
* They ain't got no papers. Anyone without good papers should die.
* They ain't got good English. If ya don't talk good English, go die.
* They're likely Catholic, not Evangelicals. Not Born Again? Die now.
* We quit training death squads where they're from. Let'em die here.
* They small bad. Anyone who smells bad should die. I'll shower now.
* They're gonna take my toilet-scrubbing job, and for low pay. Die!
* They're gonna use up all my healthcare. (Not really.) Die anyway!
* We stole 1/2 of Mexico fair & square. How DARE they sneak back in!
Welcome, Welcome, Emigrante
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Friday 04 November 2005 - BISBEE BISBEE!
Another Bountiful Week In The Border
WEDNESDAY: More work, more recovery. Still acclimating to 5500 feet — we've been driving circa sea level these last few months and it shows. But in the evening we drag ourselves over to a NoMoreDeaths presentation. Can a gov't that likes to kill people be changed? Is killing people fun?
THURSDAY: A haircut (so they'll let me back across the border), then we're off to Mexico for food & drugs & dentistry, all at a discount. Oops, the dentistry has to wait a week, the fish taco stand is closed, and the ice cream isn't up to snuff. Two dental clinics aren't up to snuff either — one is unpeopled whilst another has a biker patient pissed that his filling fell out after three weeks. But we're booked into a modern-looking place full of old gringos. Meanwhile, little things run across the road but I can't tell if they're lizards or scorpions. Welcome to the Sonoran Desert.
FRIDAY: Yet more work, but slowly. Will Maureen feel up to painting a chair for the upcoming contest-auction? The upcoming dental experience may delay our drive to California, thus giving more time to finish things here, but we still hope to be back there by Thanksgiving (USA).
YET MORE ILLEGALS: Cover story on the TUCSON WEEKLY is about the rescue of a Honduran woman who broke her femur in the desert and was left to die by her coyote (smuggler). Other UDAs found her, flagged down the Border Patrol, and were deported. An AP story says that illegal immigrants are FAR less likely to visit hospital ERs than are legal residents or US citizens. MINUTEMEN militia say they've deterred many border crossings, but others say better crops in Mexico kept many Mexicans working at home this year; meanwhile, the death toll rises annually. And another AP headline reads: FARMERS FEAR WORKER SHORTAGE FOR WINTER HARVEST.
(I may have mentioned this before: There ain't many UDAs from Costa Rica. Costa Rica has a stable political-economic situation, hasn't had an army for 60 years. No US-backed dictatorships and death squads. Little reason for citizens to flee north.)
The WASHINGTON TIMES reports today that GOP leaders "are looking closely at ending birthright citizenship and building a barrier along the entire US-Mexico border as they search for solutions to illegal immigration." Birthright citizenship is in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." This is also the key to Roe vs Wade — a fetus hasn't been born and thus isn't legally a person. I suspect that illegal immigration is just a smokescreen here. But GOP leaders wouldn't THINK of using this as a cover for their anti-abortion plans, eh?
(A certain ideology holds that a fetus is a person with Constitutional rights, and a corporation is a person with Constitutional rights, but a native-born US adult charged with certain offences is NOT is a Constitutionally-protected person. Hmmm...)
Consider what putting up a 2000-mile-long Berlin-Wall-like barrier would entail. Resources would drain away from other projects, like rebuilding New Orleans and Mississippi River levees. Lots of money would be spent. Who would do the work? To keep labor costs down, it'll have to be... ILLEGALS! And a passive barrier would just invite attempts to pierce through or tunnel under or climb over it, thus constant patrols would be mandatory — tens of thousands of border security agents, federal employees who won't come cheap and who won't be doing productive work.
(An effective barrier doesn't need constant patrols, just automatic machineguns and other deathtraps to kill anyone within a few dozen yards of the border. Don't get too close to take pictures, folks.)
Lacking a land border to cross, more illegals will be shipped in, filling overstuffed tramp freighters or shipping containers. More deaths. And now who'll do the agricultural and construction and dishwashing and meat-processing and shitty industrial work performed by illegals? How much must wages be raised to attract USAnians to do crapwork? How much will prices rise then? How much inflation can you stand? Another headline today: WALMART ECONOMY KEEPS LID ON INFLATION. Guess what — without scads of desperate illegals, the US economy would collapse. I guess it's time to reinstate slavery.
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Saturday 05 Nov 2005 - BRIGHT SUNNY BISBEE!
A day off from our toils.
We slowly cruise the yard sales and thrift shops but can't find a chair to decorate for the charity auction. Maybe next year. We notice that Old Bisbee seems to have money being pumped in to upgrade houses and shops. Some of the shop renovations are major — will enough tourist cash flow into town to pay for everything?
We stop at a home in the Saginaw section, next to the slagheaps on the highway to Douglas. The yardseller gives us Saginaw's mini-history: it's a landfill covered with historic houses, all formerly of the now-abbreviated Lowell district. As Lowell was devoured by the ever-widening copper mine pit, its structures were relocated. A portable history on tough soil.
A road map of Bisbee looks something like this:
to
Tombstone North
\ West + East
\ South
Old
Bisbee
\
The \
Pit Lowell
\
O- - - - - - to Douglas
/ \
/ \
/ Warren
/
San Jose
/ not to scale;
/ do not use
Naco for navigation
--------
Mexico
That's a roundabout in the middle. San Jose and Naco are high flatlands; Warren is a little valley; all the other boroughs are in canyons or gulches. Much of the Warren surroundings are giant slag heaps, artificial hills. Other little boroughs are scattered in the barrancas: Bakerville, Saginaw, South Bisbee, Tintown, Don Luis, Briggs. Yet other boroughs have been buried or swallowed. Phelps-Dodge still owns much of the surrounding terrain; other districts could yet disappear. Watch the recent Stephen King film DESPERATION for lots of on-site footage of Lowell and Old Bisbee.
Land is flatter west and south from San Jose and Naco and east towards Douglas. Greater Bisbee is at the south end of the Mule Mountains. The great Lavender Pit is a mile-long hole where a great mass of copper used to be — tiny, compared to the Manhattan-sized excavation at Morenci away northeast. But you wouldn't want to fall into it.
Today's drive reminds us that we can visit several communities (planned to chaotic) and cross the desert and drive through mountains without ever leaving the limits of a city with fewer than 7000 residents. A half-dozen or more distinct shopping districts; sublime scenery; mansions and shacks for sale, cheap and otherwise. A unique place in America.
NOTE: 1/3 of all homes in Old Bisbee are ONLY accessible by stairways, not by drivable roads. I read that somewhere.
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Monday 07 November 2005 - BISBEE BISBEE!
Yet Another Bountiful Week In The Border
YESTERDAY: Back to work.
TODAY: Do some more work.
TOMORROW: Yet more work.
WORKING: What this means is, we sleep late, get up slowly, then labor for a couple hours at painting and plastering and pummeling the property into propitiousness. Then a lazy lunch, an afternoon nap, maybe a little touching-up, and an evening of reading etc. It could be worse.
This morning, a little walking-stick insect bothers Maureen as she paints the porch. No scorpions or tarantulas or centipedes-millipedes, not even a praying mantis. And no chupacabras or vampire bats. Boring...
EVENING: We walked over to the library for a (belated) free showing of Michael Moore's FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and now I'm pissed off. I've been reading Stephen King's THE STAND (original uncut version) and it's a relief to escape from actual horror into fantasy horror. An image floating around the Web these days bears a photo of a smirking Dubya captioned WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE GEORGE BUSH A [BJ] SO WE CAN IMPEACH HIS LYING ASS? Which won't reincarnate the 100,000+ Iraqi civilians and 3000+ US troops killed in the last couple years, but it's a start. (Yes, those numbers are higher than the 'official' bodycount. Reality bites.)
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'PATAPHYSICS FOR TRAVELERS: There's Always Another Exception
WEALTH AND POWER FOR TOTAL MORONS: What To Do With That What You Ain't Got
(see The 48 Laws of Power)
THEOPHYSICS FOR TRAVELERS: The God Particle Goes On Forever
TRAVELERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD: Super Discount Vacation Packages to Armageddon
CRYPTOZOOLOGY FOR TRAVELERS: Last Train to Sasquatch
MY TURN by Claudius Ptolemy
As I said in my Almagest, which was well accepted for almost 1500 years, the motions of the planets can be explained by careful
observations and complex mathematical formulas based on the principle
that the earth is at the center of the universe. But then so-called
"scientists" came along and now I just don't get any respect. But
thank Zeus, things are starting to change. As for evolution, I really
don't have a dog in that fight, but I like the direction we're headed:
backward. Soon as we discredit this Darwin fellow, Newton (who said
some pretty ugly things about me by the way) will be next, then
Galileo and Copernicus and bingo! I'll be back in the pink! So Zeus be
with the Kansas and Pennsylvania school boards! I certainly am.
(end of dispatch #19)
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Wednesday 09 November 2005 - BISBOO BISBOO!
Sometimes life just keeps proceeding
Yesterday and today, the last couple days of work here: more mortaring and painting, and I roof-climb the house and shed without a safety net. Tomorrow we're off to the dentist, and we'll see what's necessary and what might delay our departure.
Sometime in the next few days we'll load the RV with everything we left behind the last time we passed through. Then return to California, leaving as early as Saturday 11 November or as late as... ??? Hopefully no later than Sunday 20 November. We'll see.
Meanwhile, I'm ashamed. Yesterday I missed my first election since I turned 18. We didn't know we'd be in Arizona in time to have absentee California ballots mailed here. Oy. Some years I exercise the franchise so much, it damn near wears out. I guess those days are over, at least until we stop traveling.
Ah, the Governator almost couldn't vote. He went to his Brentwood polling place but there was a little mixup with the voting machines. Oops. Good thing he's buddies with the GOP activists that own the vote-machine companies. If this had happened to any of the rest of us — well, like Stalin said, it's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes.
TEXANS ARE MORONS: As evidence, they TWICE elected Dubya as governor; although they didn't know he was a deserter, they DID know he was a crooked businessman and a baseball team owner. Even New Yorkers aren't stupid enough to vote for George Steinbrenner.
More tellingly, Texans regularly elect representatives that Molly Ivans describes as "not having the brains the good Lord gave a rock." Case in point: the new no-same-sex marriage amendment to the Texas constitution. (That constitution has about 300 435 amendments, of which 100 repeal another 100. Busy busy busy...)
The final wording of the joint resolution (H.J.R. No. 6) that went to ballot says "Marriage in this state shall consist only of
the union of one man and one woman." Doesn't define 'man' or 'woman' so how are they distinguished? By DNA? By their plumbing? By whether or not they like the Three Stooges? Transsexuals may have a little wiggle room here, or not. Judges and lawyers will stay busy.
But the amendments that were left out of that resolution are even better. "This state may not recognize a marriage if either party to the marriage has previously been married three or more times in this state or in another jurisdiction... A union in this state, of one man and one woman, must include some sexual intercourse."
Three strikes and you're out? Given the high divorce rate of Southern Baptists, that would make most young Texans little bastards before long. Mandatory sex? Visualize the foreplay: "I don't care if you gotta headache, we're gonna obey the damn law!" Then there was Senator Hinojosa's "messing around amendment" but he withdrew it. Whew.
NOTE: All the above is true. I didn't have to make anything up.
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