The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Nothing going on. Nothing to write about. Nothing interesting to even steal pass on.

So here are some funny pictures instead.

Paulo the Stallion from Hell’s behavior has been more hellish than usual, just lately. Since two of his ladies came to be in a family way, he seemed to have mellowed right out. But H sold the 12-year-old mare (Cindy) she’d bought a couple of months ago for saddle work because she’s “lazy” and replaced her with another mare named Spirit who is – and I quote – Awesome.

She’s also freakishly big for an Arab mare, and for some reason Paulo has decided that she must be killed. Normally he only behaves that way toward other stallions. Paulo’s worldview is extremely simple: Mares are for mating, stallions are for killing. He doesn’t seem to notice the existence of geldings. Rather than his normal misbehavior of pacing obsessively and carrying on whenever one of his mares leaves the paddock, he has now taken to charging the fence in obviously murderous attempts to reach Spirit. H says she thinks Spirit’s size has convinced him that she is a male, all objective evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Since horses seem to work by scent as much as any dog, I don’t find this explanation convincing. But I don’t have any alternatives, and besides it’s really none of my business.

Anyway, Paulo has gotten a lot more frisky lately and I’ve learned to literally watch my back around him. He’s usually not hostile toward me, but he is mercurial and occasionally violent, and the wrong impulse at the wrong time could get me busted up. Earlier this week, out of the blue, he reached across the shit-wagon I habitually keep between us and nipped my shirt, right in the back. Then he let go and scampered to the other side of his paddock. Since he was perfectly capable of going for meat if he’d wanted to, I think he was actually playing with me and didn’t take it personally. But he’s never done anything like that before, and any activity that involves Paulo’s teeth is automatically suspect in my book.

This morning Paulo was wearing something new: A bright plastic collar. Attached to the collar was something that looked suspiciously like one of those shock collars that hunters use to train dogs. I asked J about it; he said, “Yeah, that’s a shock collar, like hunters use to train dogs. We nail him with it every time he gets worked up and starts charging the fence.”

“Has that worked?”

“No, not really. But it’s entertaining as hell to watch him try and figure it out.”

Later I went into their house for something. On the counter near the door was a small electronic device, like an undersized FRS radio. There was no label, but I had a fair idea what it was.

I held it up. “Hey, J! If I push this button right here, will I hear a horse neigh like in Young Frankenstein?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Probably.”

Ghost isn’t called that because he’s so obtrusive and in-your-face. He’s more independent than the average dog, and also considerably smarter. Calling him smarter than Little Bear would be like calling a bulldozer heavier than a feather pillow, but never mind.

Anyway…Three times a week I go off to shovel shit, as early in the morning as possible so I can catch some cool. When I first started doing this it was winter, and I generally brought the boys with me and left them in the Jeep. But then it got too hot to do that, and also LB ate the gearshift knob which lost him a substantial portion of his Jeep privileges. So before I go a-shitshoveling, they go into Gitmo.

They both know this. LB can be bought off with a Treat under any circumstances, so he prances happily into Gitmo. Ghost…disappears. Oh, he likes Treats too. But just because he can be bought doesn’t mean he’s a cheap whore. He figures he’s a big boy, and will just…well, what he figures is that I’ll forget the whole thing and let him come along in the Jeep.

Once in a while, I admit, I let him get away with that sort of thing, which makes me a bad uncle. But usually I’ve got my own list of off-property chores and just can’t be worrying about him while I do them. So to get both dogs into Gitmo I call them both, lock up LB, then go do something else. After a semi-respectful interval to encourage me to forget the whole “Gitmo” thing, Ghost comes out from whatever he’s hiding under and wants to hang out. At which point I say, “Gitmo!”

Busted.

He sighs heavily, trudges to the Gitmo fence, and accepts his Treat through the bars.

Every. Damned. Time.

Sigh.

Y’know, I’ve stayed away from the whole Islam thing for the past nine years. It hasn’t always been easy. But the fact is I’ve always been of two minds on the subject, and the most prevalent of those minds is a lot less negative on the subject than your average neocon Muslim-hater.

In another life I spent time around the Persian Gulf. Most of the people I worked with preferred “Arabian Gulf.” I was in Saudi, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman. A few times I wasn’t entirely sure where the hell I was. I met a LOT of Muslims, and though some of them took their religion as seriously as any Baptist (some didn’t) they were also about that fanatical about it, even in Saudi, where religion is as serious as a heart attack. At no time did anybody swing a scimitar at me and say “convert or die,” okay? In fact, the closest thing to a religion-related incident occurred during an otherwise very pleasant supper in a Shi’ite house where our host was going on about the wonders of Husayn and my American partner thought he was talking about Saddam Hussein and got all hot under the collar. This was very shortly after the first Gulf War. Having read a book before my travels, I knew a Shi’ite was about as likely to serve roast pork as have anything good to say about Saddam, but it wasn’t the time to say so and fortunately my partner held his tongue until I could explain later. Husayn bought the farm almost 1500 years ago, but compared to Muslims the Irish have the memories of mayflies. Muslims can really hold a grudge – I admire that, having a few of my own – but I never met any Muslim who was holding one against me.

Er…granted that was a long time ago. My reception might not be quite as friendly these days. But my point is, in general I’ve got nothing against Muslims. I’d rather they kept their fanatics under better control, but I also don’t deny that there’s been a lot of provocation.

Which doesn’t mean I advocate sitting around while anybody picks on innocent people. Even if they’re not too bright.

Remember Molly Norris? Yeah, she’s the lady who – apparently without thinking things through very carefully – announced May 20 as “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”. Now I’ve got nothing to say about that, if that’s what you want to do it’s your business and all, but she apparently did this without considering possible repercussions. Like death and stuff.

How she failed to notice what happened the last time a cartoonist pissed off a bunch of Muslims, I truly don’t know. It was in all the papers. But when reality came back from its vacation, instead of following through she bailed on the idea. It does kind of indicate a certain lack of seriousness about the whole thing, but the damage was pretty much done by then.

In June this shithead called for her to be killed, and you might say her life went downhill from there.

Well, it hasn’t gone away. Today I read that Molly Norris has gone underground “on the advice of the FBI.” The Seattle Weekly, the paper she drew for, courageously issued a brief press release in which the publishers said, “Who’s Molly Norris?”

I’m being driven to the belief that religious tolerance, like any other good thing, can be taken too far. This is pissing me off.

No, I won’t join the “%$#@ All Muslims” crowd. But I am definitely wondering where all the sane Muslims are, and why they’re keeping so damned mum. This isn’t happening in Iran, it’s happening in frickin’ Seattle. If you can’t take a joke there, where the hell can you take it?

So I, Joel Simon, Editor-in Chief of TUAK, have decided to declare September 16 TUAK’s “Hermits Drawing Mohammed” Day. Since I can’t draw, I had to improvise.

I won’t tell you where I am, but you’re welcome to look. No, I don’t have FBI or police protection, though I have taken consultation with the security firm of Browning, Garand and Kalashnikov. I’m not a Muslim or a Christian, I celebrate the sacrament of The Three Eshes: Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up.

So quit picking on cute, dumb city girls and come get a piece of a smelly old hermit. Mssrs. B, G & K assure the public their production will be second to none. Come one, come all.

Over at Borepatch, there’s an excellent summary of why nobody seems able to get anything done anymore. Short answer: Government ate it. You knew I was going to say that, right?

A mere portion of the long answer:

Let’s think about fast and slow. The Empire State Building was built in a little over 15 months. The World Trade Center (Tower 1) took 52 months, and that was in 1970. Today, Ground Zero is still a hole in the ground.

The reason is regulation (and its bastard child, litigation). That’s the problem. We have buildings full of people that make us stop what we’re doing, fill out forms in triplicate, and then wait months or years before we are allowed to pick up where we stopped. Think for a minute what this does. It pushes some of the middle of the S-Curve into the flat part, reducing the overall value of the industry, as resources get sidelined instead of being engaged in production. More damagingly, it pushes the next S-Curve to the right, increasing the time that it takes to bring a new industry online. Most damagingly of all, it possibly completely eliminates some S-Curves from appearing at all, because the risk is too high to attract investors.

It’s not the tax rate, it’s the regulation rate that’s making the economy run down. Sarbanes-Oxley, passed in great haste after Enron’s collapse, has all but destroyed the high tech IPO market. Think of that as S-Curves that never came into existence.

RTWT. The comments are pretty good, too.

The plans and schemes of tyrants are broken by many things. They shatter against cliffs of heroic struggle. They rupture on reefs of open resistance. And they are slowly eroded, bit by little bit, on the very beaches where they measure triumph, by countless grains of sand. By the stubborn little decencies of humble little men.
– Eric Flint

Hey, remember when PETA came up with all those great things high-end survivalists should be eating? Well, guess who wants to dictate what soldiers eat, too?

PETA — well-known for dogging politicians with various protests — didn’t see the humor in that. The animal rights group has sent a letter to Biden “urging him to stop feeding returning U.S. troops fat- and cholesterol-laden hot dogs and to give them lean, nutritious veggie dogs or other vegan food instead,” according to a release.

The case is thus: “One in four Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 [is] too fat for military service, and research shows that vegans are far less likely to suffer from obesity as well as leading killer diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.”

“You can’t expect the troops to be lean, mean fighting machines if you’re stuffing them with fattening, artery-clogging meat, eggs and dairy products every day,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman says. “These men and women have seen enough violence, so the nicest thing that the vice president can do is to spare animals from the violence of factory farming and turn our servicemen and servicewomen onto the lifesaving benefits of delicious vegan food.”

Sheesh. Joe fergodsake Biden briefly does something I don’t find completely contemptible, and the loonies descend on him for it.

Not even the Annointed One escapes unadmonished:

And what about all those hamburgers enjoyed by Biden’s colleague, Barack Obama?

“The next time that the president stops at Ben’s Chili Bowl, we’ll have a Boca burger reserved for him so that he can promote healthy eating to his kids and the nation’s,” said a PETA spokesperson. “They sell Boca burgers at Ben’s, and they’re delicious!”

With friends like these…

Seen at Sipsey Street.

Alan at SnarkyBytes brings us the tale of a town that wants to bring in new tax revenue the old-fashioned way – out and out extortion.

Rock Hill officials plan to turn off utility taps of county residents who refuse annexation by today’s noon deadline despite being asked for an extension, city officials confirmed Tuesday.

Starting Monday the city plans to phase out service to residents who do not agree to annexation. Those who agree to annexation will not be affected, city officials said.

No comment from my side would seem necessary under the circumstances.

Okay, so today I glued together all the different parts of the Lair’s water plumbing. So I thought.

The lair is built on concrete pilings, so this was all done lying in dirt, often with the bottom of a 2X12 brushing my nose. It’s a pretty simple job, really, since there are only four outlets for the water inside the lair. But the cold-water pipe for the shower had to pass through a timber, then make two tight turns and up through the hole in the floor. Finicky, and in very tight corners. Time-consuming. Which in turn made me forget that I’d stuck the pipe I’d cut for the toilet supply into its T-fitting, but…never…actually… Well, never actually glued it in.

I got everything put together, went inside and glued caps on all the pipes sticking out of the floor. Climbed up the ridge to the cistern, turned the water back on. Walked down the ridge. Went inside the Lair. Went to each of the pipes to look for leaks. Once I’d confirmed that they were dry, I’d crawl back under the lair and make sure all the fittings were dry. PVC is easy to work with, and this is one thing I’ve done lots. I didn’t anticipate any real problem.

Until I took hold of the pipe for the toilet and gave it a wiggle. And felt the whole thing fall away under the floor. To an accompanying cascade of water. %$#@!

It didn’t do any damage. But I got to fix it lying on mud, not dirt. I’z so stupid.

%$#@!

Not an especially hot day, but very bright. I spent the morning crawling around under the lair (the boys thought this was very nice) drilling holes and running pipe. When I went as far as I could with what I had and started to crawl back out into the sun, my inclination was to crawl right back under again and maybe join the boys in a nap. But lunch beckoned.

Following a rather humorous conversation with Landlady last weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about work ethic (ain’t got none) and guilt (got lots.) She laughed at me for listing and apologizing for all the things I hadn’t done – or even worked on – in the past week. And it’s true that for the past few weeks I haven’t had any motivation to do stuff, including stuff I absolutely must get done before it gets cold or I’m not going to have a habitable place to live. I was doing really well for a while, but lately all I want to do is sit and read and that’s mostly all I do. Oh, give me a good reason, like money, and I’m there. But the non-paying stuff I’m supposed to be working on hasn’t been getting done lately.

Of course, a major part of the reason I’ve worked (heh) on learning to live on very little money is the desire to not have to work if I don’t feel like it. If I’m gonna be poor as a churchmouse – and I sure am – I may just as well adopt the lazy lifestyle of the hermit I set out to be. Fact is, other than keeping specific promises I don’t actually have to work all that hard. And I don’t. So why do I persist in feeling so damned guilty about it? Hell, I’ve never even been Catholic.

The boys think it’s great. A little walky, a little Jeep ride from time to time, and all they want to do for the rest of the day is snooze with Uncle Joel.

I know I bitch on the blog about the busy weekends, but I hope you know that’s in fun. Most of the time I look forward to Landlady and M coming over, because it’s fun to work on projects with other people to provide the motivation to get me off my ass. And the progress they’ve made on the Meadow House and M’s Dome has been really exciting. I’m also quite excited at the prospect of moving into The Secret Lair, which is maybe six weeks away now – two months tops. If I’ll just get off my ass. Thanks to HPAV Gulchendiggensmoothen, I don’t even have to dig out the now-filled-in trenches for the Lair’s septic system, or manually haul all the sand I’ll need for it. That brings my timeline much more back into the realm of reality. So logically, there’s no reason for me to beat myself up over succumbing to the temptation to kick back and see what-all Honor Harrington is up to today. But I do it anyway.

Maybe it’s just programming. I spent my life working for a living, which means sticking to the schedule, accepting the slavery of the alarm clock, punching in on time. Five days belong to your employer, the remaining two belong to the honey-do list. Time for yourself? Don’t be ridiculous. How selfish can you be?

Now I’ve got nothing but time for myself, and don’t get me wrong – I find interesting and enjoyable ways to fill it. But they’re not always – they’re usually not – terribly productive ways, and that triggers all my guilt centers.

Sigh – this business of being human. It’s such a pain. :^)

Over at TJIC, there’s a discussion of this NYT article about setting back the social security retirement age. Of course the writers start with a tear-jerker story about a broken down fellow in a tire factory who can’t afford to quit and won’t make it to the standard retirement age. No doubt readers’ tears obediently and abundantly flow.

Travis goes all mainstream Libertarian on us…

…but just because he’s got a rough lot doesn’t mean that (a) he has to retire at age 62, (b) even if he does retire at age 62, we taxpayers have to subsidize that retirement.

The age at which one gets social security should be 68 or higher, and

(a) if Mr. Hartley has the means, he should retire whenever he wants.

(b) if he can’t throw tires at age 62, but can’t afford to retire either, then he should look for other work to fill the gap from 62 to 68. He’s obviously a vigorous guy, even if his back hurts, and there’s very little unemployment in Texas (relative to Ohio), and I’m sure that he can get a job at a Barnes & Noble or a Starbucks, doing trivially light labor.

…and I don’t necessarily disagree on any particular point. Though I certainly will throw a bit more sympathy in the direction of Jack Hartley than Libertarian orthodoxy dictates. I’m about the same age as this guy, in the kind of physical condition that would preclude my doing that kind of work every day – or even a day. I’d probably make it about four hours. And I wanna know – How come Jack Hartley, who presumably hasn’t been making minimum wage all this time, is so broke after a lifetime in a tire factory that his only option is SS?

Did worn-out retirement-age laborers traditionally seek out an ice flow and yell “Soup’s on, polar bears!” before Roosevelt came along? Because I don’t think they did.

“Taxed to death,” anyone?

Ready to build that critical underground bunker, but your poor tyranny-oppressed back just isn’t up to all the digging? Take heart, hermitty peoples of the outback! The HPAV Gulchendiggensmoothen is now taking orders for empty space to replace all that annoying dirt that’s now in the way! Or, if you prefer, the other way ’round!

It may be old. It may be ugly. It could maybe profit from a few gallons of WD40 to get it to stop creaking in the morning. But all that’s true of me too, and I generally show up sooner or later.

Alas, it’s not mine. Say hello to M’s New Toy! (Which is a far more likely name, when finalized, than the one I just gave it, I do confess.)

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up…

“Whether you live in an underground bunker or a penthouse suite, the best way to ensure that you’ll still be around next year is to ditch meat and go vegan,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “By maintaining a vegan diet, the bunkered survivors would be in better shape to adapt to their post-apocalyptic world and would help put an end to the doomsday scenarios that animals on factory farms and in slaughterhouses face every day.”

Actually, more like “AAAAHHH!

So I’m (Thinking I’m) watering the apricot tree, when I go down and it turns out all the water I’d run so far just ran off into the meadow because the tree’s basin has pretty much filled in with clay during the monsoon. I grab a shovel and start tossing dirt into the breaches in the basin. There’s a big tumbleweed in my way. I give it a chop with the shovel. Something lands on my forearm.

The biggest, most ginormous brown recluse I’ve ever personally seen is STANDING ON MY ARM! AUGH!!

Fortunately it seemed as surprised by the whole thing as I was and made no objection to being flipped right the hell back off my arm. Since it let me live, I gave it the same courtesy and we parted ways amicably.

Oddly, this was on almost exactly the same spot as the Snake Episode a few weeks ago.

Another reason not to buy Glocks? We report, you decide.

Once I got over my “steel-frame only” dinosaur mindset, my only objection to Glocks was that they were butt-ugly. Nobody can reasonably cling to the fantasy that they’re not perfectly reliable pistols, because they are. But they’re still about as pretty as a mud wall.

Still – and even though I recognize that it’s none of my business – I do wish gun manufacturers would stop selling to their natural enemies…and mine.

I’m capable of taking this to absurd extremes, which I don’t try to advocate to others. For example, I crave an OKC RAT-3 knife, even though my $30 Gerber Freeman is perfectly suitable. RATs are sexier.

But I don’t own one, because RATs are associated (in my mind, at least) with these people, who proudly advertise themselves as an “ATF Licensed Vendor”……which isn’t a huge plus in my book. I just really, really hate the ATF and what it’s done to abuse shooters over the decades. How anybody who does business with shooters can bring themselves to advertise – let alone have – an association with the shooters’ sworn enemy…

Well, it is a puzzlement.

“Who’s a good president? Obama’s a good president, isn’t he? Yes he is!

Hee hee – I didn’t even bother reading the article, because it had to be a comedown. Jim Treacher owes me a monitor.

When Mayor Bing gets his wheels ripped off, I say good for him for getting rid of Coleman Young’s praetorian guard. That sort of thing would never have happened to the Mayah, because anybody who tried would have gotten ventilated but good. But then somebody swipes Jesse Jackson’s Escalade and leaves it up on blocks, and I’ve (snort) gotta say…it’s a (khkhkh) damned (hee) (choke) shame…BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA….

I’m still trying to get a handle on this book thing. Normally by now I’ve given up on the project, but I really think there’s something here. Still, I’m kinda floundering. If I could only find where the damned plot is hiding…

7 – “…There is no lamp in all this dark…”

Shadow’s memories, where they existed at all, were mostly vague at best. He knew he’d spent a lot of time lying to himself about much that had gone before, and that the lies themselves were the sort of things he would mostly have chosen to blot out of memory. Exactly how many of his troubles during that long, half-forgotten time he’d brought on himself, he really couldn’t say any more. Mostly, of course, he just didn’t give it any thought but when he did he found himself forced to sift through a rat’s nest of self-justification and self-recrimination. Even while it was all going on, he had never really very clearly known just who was doing what to whom.

There had been phases, eras, each lasting for years and to each of which he’d once given a name. The “Angry Young Man” phase, the “Good Citizen” phase, the “Bad Husband” phase. None of them made for pleasant reflection. How had it all gotten so fucked up? What had he done to bring it all about, what had he done to deserve it? He really didn’t know.

He remembered a woman’s warm smiles, and happy laughter. But he also remembered the same woman’s scorn, anger, rejection. Did he do something to deserve that? Probably he did, because he thought of it all through the filter of his own bewilderment and isolation – his own detachment from it, even at the time. Whatever she’d wanted or needed him to be, he hadn’t been that. He sure hadn’t ever connected with her, that was clear. And he hadn’t ever really…wanted to. Mostly he’d just wished she’d leave him the hell alone. Probably not a great recipe for happy marriage, huh?

But exactly why he’d related to her so badly, he didn’t know. He just couldn’t remember. It didn’t seem like she was such a bad person. Somehow it was all on him. But at the same time he didn’t remember that he’d ever really done anything bad to her. He didn’t screw around on her, he was sure of that. He got mad at her, but he never hit her or abused her – not on purpose. He just…wanted to be left alone.

It was all he’d wanted since he was a kid. He remembered cops in some burg in upstate New York, in Oklahoma, in Georgia – oh, those bastard cops in Valdosta – in Salt Lake City. His young traveling days, as a long-haired, van-driving vagabond, seemed like a guided tour of every “hippie”-hating barney in every small town. Something about him screamed “You can push this one around, so go for it.” And they did, boy. He couldn’t pass through fast enough. He’d only spent one night in jail during that period – that had been the lovely experience in Valdosta – and try as they might they hadn’t found a single seed on him though they’d practically torn the body panels off the van. In the end they’d arrested him for driving through a red light. He spent his night in jail, and the next day the judge had just told him to get out of town. With that instruction, he had been only too happy to comply.

Oh, yeah. Compliance. That was the thing.

Too much, too much. Every experience Shadow had ever had with any sort of authority had taught him to fear it, to hate it. That knowledge had curdled inside him until anyone who ever needed anything from him, other than simple technical service in a job where the duties were reciprocal and impersonal, became a symbol of duties required of him without his consent. All they wanted – all anybody wanted – was compliance, and Shadow didn’t do compliance well. Never had. Somehow that had even applied to his wife. No, not a great strategy for happy marriage at all. He never should have tried it. In the end, no matter what lies he told himself afterward, it wasn’t her fault.

No, Shadow didn’t like to think about the marriage.

He’d had a career once. That was in the “Good Citizen” phase. That could have gone well, because once he was really good at what he did. But he’d ruined that. Couldn’t get along with people. Oh, he got along with his own people well enough, but his problem was worse – he couldn’t get along with customers. A chief engineer, in any company, was a manager – a politician. They accepted your proposal, then changed everything around to where nobody could make a buck working for them. They didn’t really know what they wanted, and didn’t start making decisions about what it wasn’t until they saw the first draft – and that’s when the change orders started, contracts and timelines be damned. And he knew he hadn’t always handled that very well. You don’t tell a customer, “You can have it good, you can have it cheap, or you can have it Tuesday. Pick one.” It doesn’t go well with you when that word gets back to your boss. And a contractor who couldn’t handle customers was an unemployed contractor, no matter how good he was at making product. So he’d gradually stopped having a career.

It had all gotten so fucked up, back when he’d tried to play the game.

Then there was the tax thing. Shadow smiled at the thought. Those memories didn’t have any power to sting him. Oh sure – when the marriage thing and the career thing were both coming off the tracks at the same time, well, that might not have been the very best time he could have picked to piss off the taxman, too. But he’d gotten tired and mad. And when Shadow, or whatever he’d called himself back then, got tired and mad he stopped trying to be reasonable. He stopped complying, and they didn’t like that. They didn’t like that.

Heh. They probably liked it less when he bugged out on them and their damned forms. No, that memory didn’t sting. Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke.

There’d been a phrase for it from out of his professional vocabulary, for what he’d had to do when he couldn’t make money the old-fashioned way any more. Oh yeah – “Core Competencies.” That was it. The stuff you had to know how to do before you could do the stuff they really paid you to do. Like, if you were a delivery driver, you had to be able to drive. You had to be able to back a truck, and use a lift gate, and maybe you had to be able to lift heavy things. Sure. But you also had to be able to read, because road signs use words. Know the difference between left and right – some people really don’t. Maybe be able to use a map. Lots of elementary stuff. So there wasn’t any point in teaching a new delivery driver how to use the latest and greatest lift gate, if it turned out he couldn’t read road signs. He didn’t meet the core competencies, which were mostly things so basic you didn’t even give them any thought till they tripped you up.

Yeah. Core competencies. So if he couldn’t run a department that wrote training programs because he couldn’t get along with customers, that was a core competency in which he was deficient, see? Which also meant he didn’t have much of a future as a freelancer, because kissing asses is the very first core competency for a freelancer. Hell, he knew guys who couldn’t type and were better – or at least more successful – freelancers than he was.

Typing. He remembered that was the first thing he wrote on his list of core competencies. He was a really good typist. He knew the basic office apps like the roof of his mouth. He could drive.

So he started working as an office temp. Somebody else might have seen that as a big come-down, but as it turned out it was only the start. The best part of it was that a temp was a contractor, which was reported to the taxman in a whole different way and let him drop off their radar for a while.

But it was really hard for a guy to live in a city on an office temp’s sporadic pay. And anyway, making money wasn’t really his problem. He was sick of everything. Everything had let him down – or maybe he’d let everything down, he really didn’t know.

One thing was for damned sure, and that was that he was sick of cities. He wanted out. And that meant he had to take the professional thing back another couple of notches.

Jobs aren’t hard to come by if you don’t care what you do for a living. But you still have to have something to sell. And that meant going back before all that time he’d spent in offices. He had to get his hands greasy again.

“I’m starting to think Monsoon is pretty much over.”

Yeah. Cats and dogs. Barely made it home.

…that you’re in the wrong place if you want to be a lazy hermit.

Okay, it’s Labor Day weekend. Which, since two of the stakeholders have long weekends and hot projects, means you’re pretty much doomed to labor your ass off. I ducked quite a lot of what Landlady had going on, but that maneuvered me neatly into M’s new Retaining Wall Nightmare.

It could have been worse, of course. A gigantic asteroid could have struck the Earth and annihilated all life.

No, really, it wasn’t all that bad. That’s not so much wall for three people to get started on. It’s the “get started” part that depresses me. The short, straight wall is now four feet tall, because that’s the limit before you have to call in the building inspector. The long, curved wall is a long way from that, and as you can probably see there’s a lot of concrete filling in that puppy’s future before we let anybody see it…

We got a lot of other stuff done this weekend, as well. I just can’t quite remember what it all was. But this afternoon, after Landlady and M went away, I went into the boonies with the Jeep, the two boys, and a drill motor and extension cord to perform an experiment I’d been dreaming of all weekend. I connected all that stuff to an electrical outlet at the Lair, chucked a 1″ spade bit into the drill, and aimed the whole thing at a piece of scrap 2X6. I knew my improvised electrical system would light a CFL and run a CD player. My question was would it actually run a motor with some serious torque requirements?

Answer: A Quick One-Inch Hole In A Piece Of Wood. I’m in business.

Heh – M got a couple of big retaining walls, Landlady got a functioning bathroom and kitchen sink. I got a hole in a piece of wood. I’m more excited about the hole than all their accomplishments, which may indicate a slightly skewed perspective. But since I can do that, I can install pipes in the foundation timbers. Do you know how nice it is to be able to say goodbye to cordless tools, after all this time?

Next: Plumbing installation!