Hey Hubski!

Guess I'm doing an end of year check in, or a beginning of year one.

I'm back in school. I've got a bunch of college credits that never added up to anything and am going to school for something non of those credits apply to (ok, I had 8 credits worth of past credit). I'm doing eighteen credits this semester, which is more than I've ever done at one time but I'm thinking it's gonna be ok. I'm working three days a week on top of all that. I'll go down to two days if I have to but that third day I basically the day that gives me any fun money so I'm not inclined to give it up. Hopefully I'll have an associates and a professional certificate in my hands in four semesters if I keep up the pace.

I'm studying water and environmental technology, so basically water and waste water treatment and distribution. I want a to do something different. The program is taught by just two guys with a few pickup classes on the side. Work hard and they will do everything they can to get you placed in the job you are interested in. It's kind of wild in that I'm studying chemistry, biology, math, mechanics, civil engineering and a big slice of water specific shit all at once. I've never studied so broadly in my life. Lots and lots of excel, which I've learned two other times in my life but never so intensively.

It's an hour long drive in traffic to community college that hosts the program, which just sucks, but it also means that I'm not going to have much competition to get hired in my area because most the people in the program live closer to the school than I do.

There is a wastewater plant about ten blocks north of my house. They don't call it wastewater anymore btw, it's a resource recovery plant now. The Portland Oregon plant pays more than any other facility in the region, the only other place that comes close is working in high purity water for Intel but even Intel isn't as generous. Intel is trying to hire seven out of the thirty one people in my class which puts even less competition in the job market but that job is about an hour from my house. Lots of retirements in the industry right now, easy for a responsible person who can pass increasingly hard cert exams to move up. Starts at around $32 an hour but with great benefits and it's not hard to get up to $40 in five years. There is a strange regulatory incentive to get people to pass certification tests, which increases a persons pay, no more fighting for a raise. four day weeks with lots of overtime if you want.

After I sold my coffee shop I didn't really know what to do with my self, I just kinda kicked around aimlessly for a year. I had an opportunity to buy a decent bar with a partner but realized my heart just isn't into drug dealing any more. I haven't been a regular bar patron for about twenty years, I pretty much stopped going when started bartending. I think being a bar regular is kinda sad. I don't want to spend the rest of my life with sad people. I watched this documentary a few weeks ago, it really enforced the way I feel about that life.

That being said my three day a week job is of course bartending! Where else am I going to make that kind of money without bootlicking and dick sucking. I'm working a little blue collar neighborhood joint. I almost always have fun, I try to see that my customers have fun and stay reasonably safe every shift. I have enough in the bank that I could leave at the drop of a hat and not worry about it, so I take no shit from the owner or the customers but I don't take that shit with a glad heart so everybody seem pretty happy with me. Being able to quit your service job is amazing, it really changes everything. I go to work to have fun and make money, not because I have to pay this weeks rent. Makes the whole thing more pleasant. I've never worked at such a blue-collar joint. They tip much better, they are very appreciative that you are trying to take care of them. I've tended for punks and white-collar people before and they just aren't as generous.

The downsides might be that working people love cops a lot and I really hate the cops in this neighborhood. Policing is a divisive subject in this town, what you think about the mayor and the DA are popular topics around election time. You might have heard that Portland has a homeless problem, they hate the homeless as well, we all hate the homeless but they aren't very progressive in their hatred. A few big Trump fans but not too many. They love to tip their bartenders as well, it's all good. It's a bit rougher there than anywhere else I've worked, generally not physical but sometimes. A month or two ago a guy that I had never seen before overhand point blanked a pint glass into my face, never had any shit like that happen before. I had a bloody mouth and fat lip but otherwise I was fine.

I live on a peninsula. People get trapped on a peninsula. If you are going to move the likely hood that you don't move that far is much more likely when you only have one direction out. Everyone here knows each other. It's strange everyone knowing everyone as much as they know each other here, like no where I've lived. It's a racially diverse bar where every one knows each other from high school or their cousins dated or a million different little ties going back for generations. Every where is unique in it's own way I guess but I think about the effect that living on a peninsula has on the people that live there a surprising amount, it's like an island in a way.

My kid has been playing guitar quite a bit. It's made me play more guitar than I had in ages. They showed themselves to particularly careful analyst of strumming patterns, their fierce precision is in contrast to my sloppy carefree playing. I was impressed enough with their keen sense of rhythm that I offered to buy them a drum kit for Christmas, which they took me up on. They have been playing daily and have a handful of beats at the ready. They would like to get a little band together for the school talent show but it's not going to happen, the other kids just don't care enough, probably something will come together in high school.

The kid is also doing well generally, for them at least. We had several years of unmitigated horror with them. They struggled with intense mental illness for many years, all the help we got from the medical community was of the lowest quality. For so long every road was a dead end. There are many people out there who will help you make a chore chart and charge you two hundred a session but there are very few who seem to be able to come to terms with a nine year old who's trying to kill themselves. I feel like we spent about five years in a constant state of fear, it was very bad for us, I think we still don't understand the damage it wrought on our family, relationships and minds. We finally found a good councilor, who found us a good psychiatrist, who has found us another councilor now that the first good councilor has run their course. Good help is as profound as bad help, it makes just as much a difference. I feel like we must have been swindled out of many thousands of dollars by people unqualified to help our kid and all those people are patting themselves on the back about what great healers they are.

My kid is mostly failing school. They passed everything last quarter but it's not looking good this quarter. I couldn't care, their mom cares, the school cares. They are a chip off the ol' block, I could never get in line at school, I never learned a thing I didn't want to my whole life, I don't suspect they will either. They are going to a special school for bright kids and many of the other kids look down on them, even call them the dumb kid. I think it's the last year for that school. My kid has asked to go back to their neighborhood school next year and I think it will be the right choice. Smart kid school was good for them before the academic rigor really came to the fore but it's probably not the best choice anymore.

While I do have money set aside, I need to get those union benefits. Paying for this kids heath care is slowly digging out financial grave. My wife has a great job with good pay but terrible benefits. We are paying a lot for very little. It would be revolutionary to our budget to stop paying for so much shit out of pocket.

The other enormous drag on our pocket book and to our lives is my sister in law. She has lived in a van for years, travelling all over the U.S. and having a blast but that's all coming to an end. She's got a bunch of tumors in her head and is in constant agony. The doctors are reluctant to operate for a bunch of complicated reasons but mostly because it's likely to paralyze half her face and ultimately not solve the problem. She lives in our driveway in her cute little van with her cat. She is trying to get on disability but it's a long byzantine process and it her lawyers say it will take at least ten more months. We basically pay all her bills and she eats our food and uses our power and what not. I've often not gotten along with her but now that she is so sick I feel nothing but compassion for her situation. She can't hold a job but she pitches in on housework, uses her food stamps to make dinner a few night a week and is good for the kid. I have at many times in my life lived in poverty. It's strange to me that I'm going to pay my sister in law about what I used to live on in year to just sit in my drive, but hell she needs a phone and tampons all the other things a person needs to live in basic dignity. I'm horrified that it's very likely that I'm going to watch her slowly die in my driveway.

In all pretty decent year, not looking forward to the next one. I suspect that 2024 will make us nostalgic for 2023 but I hope to be wrong. I'm feeling happy and enthusiastic for my personal life, looking forward to doing new different work, and becoming a bad drummer. Hope you are all well, I miss the Hubski that was but perhaps I need to show up for that four or five times a year.

Hubski used to be a lively and stimulating place where you could daily be exposed to ideas or positions that you rarely rubbed elbows with. It was a FUN place that could occasionally really get under your skin.

Then it became a dear diary, mutual support forum. It's the place to go when you've got something under your skin.

I heavily disengaged when an active user was shopping some soft peddled red pill content and no one else gave a shit to call him out cause he'd been around for a while. I felt like the whole place had sunk into dreary apathy.

I came back and reengaged a few times to wander away again.

I drop in now and then out of a sense of nostalgia.

I'll see many of the users in RL now and again, I knew a handful of them before this place got started.

Honestly Kleinbl00, you were probably 30% of the reason I'd log in. You were definitely the most enduring reason I've logged in for 4390 days.

I know there are people who say that you are the reason that Hubski died, because your sharp tongue is just too wicked. I think that's bullshit. You've provided me tons of entertainment through hilarious tales and educational explanations of a wildly diverse areas of natural and human endeavor.

Thanks for the memories!

The day will come when I never read anything from you again that that'll be too bad.

I'll report back!

I was vaguely aware of this brewing method but never given good enough recipe to try it out for myself. It was always "My grandma used to make coffee with an egg and the shells."

I reooened the shop this week.

It's good to see people again.

A few years ago another coffee shop moved in three blocks from my shop. It pissed me off because I knew the numbers and we were going to be eating each others dinner to the extent that I was pretty sure that they wouldn't make it but that they would hurt my bottom line pretty bad.

It was a nice couple who opened it, they had a background in dance performance and were pretty thin on service industry experience. They had a nut roasting company in back of the shop and decided they would open a retail location for their nuts and open a cafe to help make the whole thing balance out. They had a nice big nut display. Their coffee was decent and they had FOOD! They had stuff like quiche and egg sandwiches and shit like that. Another thing they had that didn't were walls painted in mocha and espresso shades with a natural edged counter all cut from the same tree. I know many people thought I was doomed, it was a very nice counter. Friends said that I should start doing food to stay competitive (I just have bagels and pastry).

I think it wasn't long before they nice couple realized that nuts weren't a destination shopping attraction, the nut display dwindled to a few shelves but they reportedly sell a lot of nuts online and to fancy shops. They double downed on the food and became more ambitious. You could get a motherfucking breakfast there with potatoes eggs and toast on the weekend. Food margins are way shittier than coffee margins and it entails a whole bunch of work and forethought to keep the machine running. The two of them couldn't man the shop and keep the nuts flowing alone so they got employees.

I know my numbers and and could pretty well judge their costs in relation to how busy they were and what their prices were. They were right about FOOD bringing em in. They were a bit busier than I was but all that labor and the worsening margins meant that the return on the work wan't panning out. I knew baristas who worked for them and they said it was a shitty unhappy place to work. I'd go in for a cup of coffee and not see the owners working or see the owners and note their strained smiles and weary eyes.

On a sidebar, why don't I have FOOD! Food has shitty margins when you have to add an employee to give any kind of decent service. If I had food I'd have to work significantly harder to eek out a relatively small amount of extra profit. I also know that the thousandth time I scrapped cheese off a plate I'd go down to the basement and hang myself from the rafters. I suppose it mostly comes down to the fact that there is a value to happiness that a small increase in marginal profit and brow sweat can't make up for.

So, I kept my head down, donated to local causes and kept getting to know the people in my neighborhood better. Most importantly I made better coffee than the other guys, all I cared about was coffee and relationships. The other shop changed their hours about ten times in a year and a half trying to find the magic hours to bring in the most money and keep labor and work to a minimum. In the end they opened later than I did and closed earlier. I loved it.

One day the other shops roaster came in to pitch me on his wares.

He walked in, saw who I carried and said "Oh, you are carrying Courier!."

He had half a dozen bags of coffee in his arms.

"You aren't going to be interested in switching roasters, Joel is the guy that inspired me to go into coffee, he's a great guy and his coffee is amazing." He gave me a few single orgins and told me to look him up if Courier ever went out of business.

I kept my head down for a year and a half and waited for them to go out of business which they finally did. They said they had to quit for personal reasons, which may to some extent be true but when you aren't making any money or having any fun personal reasons are nagging.

They immediately sold the business to another nice couple. This couple also had a background in performance and little food experience. They really went all in at the FOOD! They tried it all and were good at very little of it. I had one of their bland $7 quiches and wondered that anyone would buy such a thing twice. One of my friends got and egg sandwich and tossed it out declaring that it tasted oddly of fish and tossed it in the garbage. This couple slowly worked their own shop less and less relying on expensive employees to cover more and more shifts.

Their employees were mostly unhappy and gave shitty service. I work my shop 6 days a week for about fifty six open hours. I have two ladies who cover the seventh day alternating every other week and pick up an odd shift when I need it. They are both gems who trust to always act in my best interest and to treat people as well as I would. Neither are the all that great as baristas but they are both decent. I never worry about the shop for a second while they are there. I also have a friend who can pick up shifts who is an ace barista and great with people.

My service is consistent if a little wild and weird sometimes. When the group home goes out for coffee they come to my shop, I know their names and talk to them. I've got the vast majority of the minority business because I am happy to get to know and grateful to put coffee in the cup of almost each and every person who walks in the door. One of my black customers who has become over time one of my friends remarked that she didn't like to go in the other place. She said they were all smiles but she could tell that she wasn't welcome there. I let every mail man, UPS driver or construction work crew use my bathroom, they've become customers and the word has spread that a person out working can always get a glass of water and use the john at my place. It's really my joy when I look out on the floor and see every slice of my neighborhood life sitting at my tables. It took a couple years of development to get there but it's probably the thing that has made me the most proud of my spot. I'm sure that there are more than a few people who hate my spot. They hate the color scheme, they hate that I don't have food, they hate that I don't have lilac rose marry infused honey lattes, and they hate that I don't have all natural edged counters cut from the same tree. I'm not kid friendly. I'm not kid unfriendly but if the shop starts to look like a fucking day care with children running around and bouncing off things like bumper cars I'm like to put on NWA until things thin out a bit.

Finally the next nice couple has their dreams shattered by my unwillingness to lay down and die and just make room for the new order of natural edged counters all cut from the same tree. I worked like a dog (I like working, its not all that hard but it's long and I almost never have bad days). I kept love in my heart for all the people who chose to support me. I'm grateful for having had this chapter of my life be at least moderately successful. The second couple were out of business. I went to their equipment sale and purchased a Ditting grinder an almost like new Mazzer for $900, what a fucking deal. The Ditting is a godamn dream.

It's been a few months since they went out of business and I knew sales were up but I hadn't run the numbers and compared them to last year. I figured I was up about 30%. I just ran the January numbers and compared them to sales last year and I found that I was up 66% from last year! It's huge. It's money coming in long after fixed costs have been taken care of. I could probably make more money doing any number of things but it wouldn't be my gig and my customers. It makes me feel pretty great.

They are going to tear my shop down in about two years and I'm ok with that. It'll only be two years of the type of money I had hopped would be coming in all this time but it'll be all the sweeter for having buried a pair of starry eyed dancers dreams by being consistent and friendly and enjoying almost every day of my work life.

The past decade:

I had a kid. She's rad. I wouldn't recommend having a kid if you value your personal time. It hasn't made me happier but I can't say that it usually makes me unhappier. I didn't want a kid but I didn't want my wife to say I ruined her hopes and dreams when we were sixty so I went along with it. She's an interesting challenge who is entirely too smart and persistent too allow any one to rest easy for long. I don't relish the prospect of arguing with a teen who is smarter than I am.

I opened a business. I can't say that I'm an ambitious business owner. I hate modern marketing, I have no online presence and pretty do everything I can to sabotage the modern Portland appeal. I'm a 90's grubby Portland coffee shop stuck in a modern era. People want natural edged countertops all cut from the same tree I give them a black and red motif (see Stendall) with no frills. For some reason people love me and I've knit myself into the lives of some of the best people in my community. They are going to tear the building I rent down in two years and I find I don't really care, I look forward to a career of ditch digging in my next phase of life or any other job in which I don't have to bite my tongue lest I suffer economic consequence. It's been satisfying watching two other coffee shops that sucked the modern paradigm dick go out of business in the neighborhood whilst I've trundled along in my ugly wart encrusted glory.

It's only become more apparent that I married well. I get along with my wife splendidly. We give each other space to be who we are despite annoyances and still amuse each other. People say that they can't be in a relationship because they don't have enough in common, those people are dumb.

I have continued to amuse myself for another decade, I suspect I'm better at this than I have ever been. It bodes well for the future. I have both become more comfortable in my psychosis and banished a few of my less desirable traits

The clicking of the hubwheel is a deeply personal decision of which any one else's dogmatic or relavatory advice should be considered purely advisory.

I'm shutting down after today.

I'm going to open for a few hours tomorrow and give away milk, coffee and whatever other perishables I have left.

It's really bugging the shit out of me. Four years of 363 days a year and I'm just going to go home.

I hope to get some yard work done.

If you read the guys paper you would realize that he was writing about people and methods taught in a formal education setting and not even community college but some university and conservatory settings.

The video is watches like a sophomore persuasive essay reads. It throws a lot of shit at the wall and knows somethings going to stick for most people. I don't think it's a bad video, it's a sophomoric thought provoking exercise of some guys music channel.

For over twenty years, music theory has tried to diversify with respect to race, yet the field today remains remarkably white, not only in terms of the people who practice music theory but also in the race of the composers and theorists whose work music theory privileges. In this paper, a critical-race examination of the field of music theory, I try to come to terms with why this is so.

There's enough here that the video doesn't really convey to lead to a lot of questions. When Mr. Ewell talks about "people who practice music theory" he's talking about a certain type of higher education instructor, he isn't talking about musicians or another large collection of music instructors who aren't a part of or allowed to join his guild. He isn't talking about the fact that Oscar Peterson took piano lessons from a guy who took piano lessons from Franz Liszt. He isn't examining if Duke Ellington, easily one of the ten great composers of his day, was a man confined by the chains of 18th century western harmonic theory.

He seems to suggest the popular music we like to listen to isn't a slave to western harmonic theory. It's a nice divorce which leaves a clean white playing field for a certain type of nearly dead White music to be excoriated and music theory to be tarred with original sin.

What do I know about music theory? Not a lot. I spent one year as a jazz studies major on saxophone at an inner city university that was rated as one of the better jazz studies schools in the nation. We studied music theory, mostly counter point, lots of Bach. I don't know what other music programs are like and I don't even know if the my school had a music program outside of the jazz program for education or ensemble playing. They did mention other music theory systems in brief but the focus was to produce musicians who might be able to make a living. You learned counter point to under stand harmonic structures and if you wanted to be able to feed yourself to write commercial music or write charts. I recall a brief mention that if you wanted to learn certain exotic non jazz centered theory a teacher could point you in a direction.

I'm sure the guy who taught theory was pretty slick at that shit from a jazz perspective. I wasn't around long enough to get to know him. I knew the two saxophone players that taught pretty well. The first guy could write out a 15 piece band chart in twenty minutes. His ability to write impromptu charts was astounding, he was a master of counterpoint in a jazz idiom. The other guy was George Saxophone Benson, he was an old bad ass and widely considered the best saxophone player in Detroit. He didn't take many students and his time was wasted on me. He was writing an analysis of John Coltrane's Giant Steps, the manuscript was inches thick. He tried to teach me a system of rhythmic theory that impressed me as being totally novel, shit I'd never seen, which he said wasn't widely known. He said if you came to grips with it all possible rhythm patters were easily understood. He was an old Black master of the his craft who was largely unimpressed with my grasp of 18th century western harmonic tradition because it meant that I was a lost cause and a poor vehicle to absorb the wit and wisdom of his own sophisticated craft. Was George Benson an uncle tom or was he a sophisticated intellect that absorbed parts of a framework established by generations of musicians with which he made his own unique creations?

Music theory was a tool at that school. You learned it to make a living and to make you more capable of creating art. While Blacks don't own jazz, it's largely an art created by the unique legacy of black culture and traditions.

I only mention these two guys because neither of them are part of Philip Ewell's guild. Both were masters of music theory in their specific musical discipline, both were most highly influenced in their art by black men were also music theory heavy weights in a music that was influenced by 18th century western harmonic traditions and by wide and diverse influences that ran parallel toward and away from 18th century western harmonic music.

The video braces itself against on a framework that is narrow discussion of guild politics, personnel and cannon with regards to race and slaps it up against music theory as a wide field. I think race and music theory is an interesting thing to think about and study but I think this video largely avoids it by doing a bait and switch that gets more awkward the more you look at what it leans on.

It's real hard to find videos of the two saxophonist I studied under because they had common names that were shared with more famous jazz musicians but I found one decent video of George Benson.

Trying to think about my feelings about this video and it's failure to come to terms with the incredibly sophisticated contributions to music theory made by POC in a non academic fashion, I became tempted to play game where I talked about fabulously talented black musicians that changed music and their backgrounds in 18th century western harmonic theory. I could play it for a while but how about an example.

Bernie Worrell was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, where his family moved when he was eight. A musical prodigy, he began formal piano lessons by age three and wrote a concerto at age eight. He went on to study at the Juilliard School and received a degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1967. He then became a leg of the stool of Parliament/Funkadelic and did a lot of other shit that was a glorious celebration of Black music and played in the talking heads on the side. 18th century western harmonic music was a tool, not a prison for Worrell.

Is White 18th century German music embraced by racist assholes? I had no idea that it was but it makes sense and Ewell's essay convinces me that it and other boring music inspired by this very white branch of the musical tree is often a haven for white racist assholes.

Private instruction, community college classes, you tube videos and so much more are the elements of music theory instruction that are ignored in the video. Musician are not discussed at all unless they can be used to support the idea of music theory's racism. I'm sure there are endless interesting conversations to be had about race and music theory, I think this video hints at some of them while being a little slippery and not standing on ground firm enough to make any kind of real stand.

One of the most interesting comments on race and music made simply is Herbie Hancock's Water Melon Man.

Titled with a foul stereo type, it's a super tight sophisticated composition. The "Water Melon Man" is a powerful creator. The rhythms pulse with amazing syncopation (take that white 18th century composition, your rhythms are truly fucking boring). The instruments fit together but share little space harmonically or rhythmically. They stride forward together but don't cling to variations of theme or a shared beat, they are wildly diverse and funky. Amazing bits of improvisation are the cherry on top. Fuck your stereotype, see your Water Melon Man for what he is, a man of intellect, sophistication, discipline and talent.

bloo, this started as a comment to you and expanded, so there ya go.

One thing that always shocks me here, seeing a large swastika tattoo. My heart races and the type of guy who has one has always been very scary. I'm generally not a scared man and those guys scare the living shit out of me.

This is the only city I've lived in that I'm not surprised to see it, it's always surprising but it's no surprise if you can see what I mean.

Is the myth of Portlandia done now? I don't know, it was always a little bit true and mostly bullshit.

Hell of Proud Boy parade yesterday downtown. Why were the police unable to police them? It's cool, I know that answer already and black police chiefs don't amount to much when the rank and file has made up their minds. Will we see less of them or more now one proud boy lies dead? I've been waiting for someone to die, I figured a cop would tackle a kid into a fire hydrant and bash their brain in, I never in a million years imagined that it'd be Proud Boy.

There was a great block party two blocks from my house tonight. Three hundred or so people showed up. The block boarders a park, so it was pretty easy to social distance that many people. I'd say about 80% masked but many of the non masks put a pretty healthy amount of distance between their patch and the next groups. The crowd was about 50/50 Blacks and Whites. A food vendor sold brisket to at least a hundred people. The band played soul hits, every thing from Lauren hill to Zhane and they were smokin, great singers tight rhythm section. I guess our neighborhood pushed back the dark.

Did you see that the kid who identified Kyle Rittenhouse was seventeen year old Garrison (Teargas Proof) Davis? Young Garrison has been a front line journalist for the last 90 days of protests. kid has sucked a lot of gas and taken some blows. Don't tell me a seventeen year old can't be a journalist, this kids going places.

Most the racist are from out of town. You don't have to go far to find em. It seems like a pretty shitty state when you get to know it. There are few bastions of decency but for the most part it's somewhat backward and hateful.

Washington State and Idaho are more than competitive. One odd thing I've been more fully conceptualizing is that everywhere has mean backwards racists but they come in different flavors. They have different cultures and their mean spirited evil manifests differently.

This town is tense. I haven't had this many people cry at the counter since Trump was elected. I think the Proud Boy killing shook people today, on top of COVID, and the election and the kids not going back to school next week and what a shit ass deal kids are about to get. The moms are weepy and scared.

I'll take the time to read that piece, I'm shook today and I really can't atm. Robert Evans has a pretty good overview of why Oregon is in the running as the most racist state on his Behind the Bastards Podcast. Pretty decent podcast and Rob just had his hand broke by a Proud Boys baton last week when he was doing some journalism, lets not forget his hard work.

One of my cats learned how to kill birds and proceeded to attempt a neighborhood genocide. He went from not killing birds to killing one or two a day.

We ordered some bell collars and his kill count went down to one every two days.

We have more bells coming today, they are supposedly louder and ring easier than the ones we have.

I took his collar off today to adjust the bells (he was able to hook their rings on his teeth). He bolted during the collar adjustment and came back 20 min later with a bird.

If I can't get the bird kill rate down to something like one a year than he'll only be able to go outside at night.

He's a hell of a cat. The vet just saw him and said something like "this is what a healthy cat should look like!" He's lean fit and smart. I've never had a smart cat before.

Hope I can get a handle on his murderous behavior.

I'm drinking Broken Top bourbon from Sisters Oregon, I think they have bourbon figured out at their price point.

Wow.

There's nothing special to you about eating a good meal with good company? To me it's one of the best things in life.

I've been told that I should sign up for door dash or start delivering pounds of coffee to peoples houses while I'm shut down. I didn't open up the shop to make filthy lucre. If that's what I was in it for I could fine many ways to make more money with less work doing something else.

I don't want to stand behind a machine passing off drinks to an app slave all day. I won't wear a mask for 10 hours a day, just to have the privileged of at most three minutes business like human contact while you go in the one door and exit the other moving through tapped off squares on the floor.

My shop is a part of the neighborhood. It's the place where friendships, relationships, new businesses and public service projects are born.

It's friends who haven't seen each other in months having a chance encounter and kicking it for an hour on the picnic table.

It's really too many things to list and I'm sure it's things to people I barely know that they find important that I have no idea of.

Food is sacrament. You need it to live. Maybe this means nothing to you. Maybe food, it's enjoyment, the realization people have worked hard from soil to your cup to try and make it special just for you is of no importance, a cup at 7/11, McDonalds, or from Door Dash is as good as another.

I've noticed restaurants that start emphasizing app delivery get shitty within about six months. Their margins go down but the volume goes up. Your work harder for a little bit more money and a lot less fun. The owner touches less of what goes out the door, because the're too busy to be involved with all aspects as much as they used to be. The owner definitely has less contact with customers, cares less because it's hard to care when your main feed back is mostly the angry stares of app slaves who care for naught but time. Work isn't fun, if you can hire your way out of production you do. prices almost always go up in those first six months while quality goes down. Within a year I generally don't dine there anymore. There is a Thai place a block from my house, we used to ear there once a week, it's dead to me now but always has deliveries streaming in and out.

I don't want to live in app food world, just like I don't want to live in a cooperate food world. I haven't eaten in a Chilies type restaurant in over a decade. I have a weakness for McDonalds breakfast, I might get it once a month. I've ordered food by app exactly once in my life. If I'm going to sit at home I can make my self something to eat. If I go out I want my food to be intentional, made by someone who meant to be at this place at this time making the food they want to make, rockin whatever tunes they wanted to rock, in an environment they thought would be conducive to the experience.

Maybe I'm shallow, but eating other peoples food while I enjoy the company of the people I love and find interesting is close to one of my favorite things in life.

It's possible I am not understanding your snark. If I am understanding it than your life sounds pretty fucking sad to me but we are different people who value different things. I hope the world still NEEDS to share good food with good company.

Fuck yes they should have done more earlier on. These kids have been a menace for about 3 years.

I can't really put the blame on the police, I wish it were that simple.

The prosecutors won't put serious charges on anyone but the worst offenders. If someone commits an assault they go to jail and are back on the street the next day. It goes to trial, and the perpetrator gets a week in jail, maybe they get out early. I wish I could blame the prosecutors but it's not that simple.

There isn't enough jail space to put serious time on anyone. We built the Wapato Corrections Facility via a ballot levey but never came up with the money to man it. It's sat empty since the 90's soaking public money and providing a set for some TV and film productions at an initial cost of 58 million and 50k a month in upkeep for the last two decades. It's never held one prisoner.

In the end crimes like simple battery and pettty theft aren't even charged because there is little point.

These kids were never going to get any real charges for petty theft or simple assaults, so the cops didn't waste their time. There are too few cops for a city of Portland's size and they spend most their time running from call to call. Arresting these kids takes an officer off the street for a few hours, doesn't have any meaningful consequences for the kids and leaves the rest of the cops in that precinct without backup if they get a dangerous call.

I've overheard cops at the shop talking about how often they have to take dangerous calls with no backup and how bad it stresses them out. I'm unsympathetic to at least half of their gripes but Portland police are undermanned and aren't the omnipotent the dispensers of Justice they are often regarded as. They are a small cog in a shitty wheel that leaves us all victims.

The cops refer the whole mess to child protective services. CPS comes out to investigate and everyone living in that shitty house knows they aren't supposed to open the door to anyone they don't know, so CPS gets back in their car after no one answers and goes to their next call.

These kids are a problem without a good solution with the system we currently have.

I sincerely believe that the majority of the police would like to do more. I think at least half of officers time is spent dealing with problems related to homelessness, problems which they aren't a long term solution. Before I come off as a cop apologist at least 10% of the force are vile human beings who should never power over anyone. I've seen them do some shitty, violent things and put charges on people who were nothing but law abiding citizens just because they are sick fucking sadists.

A few days a ago I was out walking my dog with my family and my wife noticed a set of license plates in an ally. I decided to call them in. 5 minutes on hold with non emergency, I give the location of the plates. About 45 minutes later I get a call from an officer that he can't find the plates, I was a block away just retuning home from our walk. The operator did a shitty job giving the location or the officer didn't know east from West, he's a block off. I show him the plates, we thank each other and five minutes later walking up my drive way he calls me back. "Hey I just wanted to let you know I found the car the plates belong too, it's stolen and the owner is on his way to retrieve it right now." I feel pretty sure most officers would like the tools to do their job to at least an adequate degree. Many of them would like to do their job well. They aren't in that position.

I'm glad that I only have two employees that work 1 shift a piece twice a month.

Fuck the restaurants it's the workforce that I worry about.

I gave both my employees 4 pounds of coffee to weather the apocalypse. They both have other jobs and don't rely on me to pay their bills. I honestly can't believe that they've been willing to keep their shifts with me for years. I guess they like the gig.

I have immense respect for people who strongly oppose abortion and have adopted children who have been born with severe disadvantage.

I am pro-choice all the way.

I've known several people who have put their money where their mouth is and stepped up to care for a kid who is disabled or born with a drug addiiction. While I disagree with their pro-life position, I am overwhelmed by the goodness with which they hew to their beliefs.

Here we have a vapid bitch who would in no way support her beliefs with personal sacrifice.

Who fucking cares.

Are there hypocrites in every social movement?

Yes.

Is this lady one of them?

Yes.

Are there idiots who hold their pro-choice position based in nothing but their upbringing and peer group?

Yes.

This kind of story is nothing but shitty sneering about how right one side is over the other based upon the worst kind of person who hold a certain position. It's the lowest kind of story that reduces the arguments of the other side to a grotesque cartoon. I loath it.

Is abortion murder?

Yes, it is, at least to some extent.

I am an advocate for the murder if the unborn in certain situations. I don't find it a completely comfortable position to assume.

Stories like this make it a lot more comfortable to take a position that should be carefully considered.

I find this post disgusting.

I'd really like to hear a response from lil who bumped this post or steve who I suspect holds some opinion on the subject in response to what I've said. I've thought a lot about it and how I feel about abortion and people who believe it should not be legal.

My kid won the lottery to get into the talented and gifted school. I'm very happy for her, I think she's going to thrive there.

She's feeling a lot of anxiety about changing schools and not seeing her friends as much, I think it's going to be an emotional summer.

I had something else for show and tell but hell if I can recall what it was. Ah well.

We adopted a five year old Australian Cattle Dog on Monday of last week. He bolted Tuesday of last week. We tried to catch him but he is one smart and athletic dog. A dog recovery non-profit saw our post on Facebook and got involved the next day. A super athletic friend of mine who helped in the chase gave us a 5% chance of catching him by running him down. I had taken to calling him Nelson Bolt because he loves freedom as much as Nelson Mandela and was as fast as Usain Bolt.

You might say that we should have been more careful and you would be right. His disposition the night we brought him home lulled us into a false sense of security. When brought into the house he pretty much glued himself onto family members every moment, especially my wife. He seemed like a lover not a runner and when he took off first chance he had it was a surprise.

We posted fliers within a mile that said call us with a location but don't chase him and don't feed him. We didn't need to post fliers over such a big area, he stayed in small five block area that was about a quarter block from our house. When it became apparent that standing around in a nonthreatening way with a hotdog wasn't going to lure him in the non-profit provided us with a dog trap.

The dog trap spent three days at the edge of his range with no hits besides three or four pissed off house cats.

The dog recovery people said to leave the trap in one place for three days before you move it. During this time most the calls of sightings were one damn block from our house! The trap was at the furthest point from this location that was part of his range (we had a pretty dope Google map of his sightings).

One of the days we got a text that he was heading down the street toward our house. My wife went outside to try and spot him. A random lady walked up just as the dog did, followed my wife's gaze and watched him calmly trotting.

"That's my dog," says the wife. The lady looked puzzled.

"He ran away on Tuesday." The lady gives my wife an more puzzled look.

"You can't catch him, watch," and let out a little whistle, causing the dogs head to jerk around and bound off into a back yard.

The dog knew every Ally and lose fence post in a backyard by this point. He probably knows the neighborhood as well as any creature on Earth.

Finally we moved the trap right next to the house with a chicken broth trail leading from a woodpile he was known to frequent to the cage. That night he struck. Little monster reached over the trigger plate, pulled the plate with the bait out of the cage and had himself a snack. He robbed the cage twice that night.

This was all good. He thought he knew a good place to find a quick and easy meal and it was going to be his downfall. Meanwhile we caught three more cats, one of which was my super dumb cat who got caught three times, much to his distress.

I drilled a holes in a piece of plexi glass and tied it the the front bottom front edge of the trip plate, it extended the trigger for about six more inches but it was invisible under the towel that we had hiding the mechanism. He could see where the trip plate was under the towel but the extension was tied lower than the plate and it was pretty much invisible.

About 9:30 at night I heard a sad sad howl and a few little yips. We had him. The cage with the dog was too heavy for me to move myself but you were supposed to move the cage to an enclosed space before opening. My closest buddy wasn't answering his phone and I didn't know what to do. Probably stupidly I cracked the door open with my body leaned into it, any 50 lb dog that can shift my 230 lbs has earned it.

I got a hand on his collar and he went nuts. It reminded me of catching a real big fish, thrashing in every direction. I worried that he might shake loose as I dragged him out the trap and hoped he wouldn't bite me. I got a second had on his collar and drug him to the front door. He was pinning himself to every bit of architecture in a final struggle for freedom. I basically gave him a big heave with both hands on his collar and launched him through the door, legs splayed in every direction with a spinning thud, claws scrambling on the wooden floors. He looked around stunned for a moment and than crept up to wife and glued himself to her side, just like the day we got him. He was once again a sweet mild dog that loved people.

The chase consumed seven days. The dog appeared a bit skinnier, super filthy but none the worse for ware. He does seem to be unsure of his situation and a bit nervous and I'll at ease most the time. We've had him back for two full days.

He trusts me less than any other person he's met so far, which I suppose is fair seeing as I caught him and than gave him a bit of rough handeling. All the same he's sat next to and put his hand in my lap.

He really likes meeting people and other dogs. He's great at walking on a leash and is a lustful walker. He seems to know no commands which kind of surprised me with how well behaved he is on a leash, he's better than most well trained dogs I've known.

I took him to the vet and and a few not too crowded public spaces. He's behaved really well. He's friendly with kids. he behaved well when given a bath, only twice attempting half hearted escapes and wow was that dog dirty.

I haven't had a dog in twenty years and all the dogs I've had we raised as puppies. I didn't think much about how different adopting an adult dog would be. Giving him as much attention as he wants and lots of sweet praise to let him know we're glad he's with us. They say it takes about three months for a dog to get fully comfortable in new home, I hope he does.

Things are going well for my daughter in gifted nerd school.

She had a great deal of anxiety about changing schools, to the extent that she was transferring her anxiety to other issues like burglars coming in the house and killing us all or the Earth burning up due to global warming. Shit got real dark for her.

Most the anxiety was over not making new friends. She's usually pretty good at making friends but whatever.

She made friends with some kids who like to play the Pokemon card game, so I bought her starter packs. Is Pokemon a cool card game? It came after I was a kid, and really have no idea.

I've got a spare flat screen TV sitting around so I'm thinking about turning it into a virtual pinball cabinet. Virtual pinball is pretty amazing, check out some YouTube of it. I hope to get the software working by next week and if I can get that working I'll buy some hardware (buttons and a plunger plugged into a makeshift box with a USB control hub). Hopefully the week after that I can start building a cabinet. I'm going to have to find a few monitors at Goodwill for the back display.

I hope to get solenoids to simulate the bumpers and some kind of head tracker to make it do 3d as i move around, I should probably buy a tilt sensor as well.

I project 3 months so I guess it will take me 5 months to get it all up and running.

If you buy coffee, do this for me, know what size you want and wether you would like room or not when you order. If you want an alternative milk, tell the poor soul before they start your drink. Have your money ready (you know you have to pay, so stop acting like this phase is such a fucking surprise). I hear many people bitch about how slow service is at coffee shops but I'm guessing many people should be complaining to a mirror.

I'm four strong Belgium's in and have cracked open a bottle of white port wine. I haven't been able to get a proper drunk on for weeks but tonight the spirit has over taken me. Huzzah!

This isn't some kind of pep talk, just my straight opinion, no bullshit.

I always thought you were absolutely fantastic at being good to people.

I think you are a genuinely good person, a better person than most of us in this world.

If you don't feel that way than that's probably why you are a good person. Most of us think pretty well about what great guys and gals we are and that's why we'll never be very good.

That's something.

It's better than being a good motorcycle rider or the best actuary at the firm.

Men in particular spend a lot of time trying to gauge their success and it causes a great deal of distress when they are dissatisfied with different aspects. It's why men kill themselves, cheat on their spouses beat their kids ect. It's a trap.

I guess this is the pep talk part. Be ok with who you are. That's all the pep I have for you.

Love ya

Chris

I'm building a stilt fortress for my kid in the back yard, I started today.

I've got 4 20 foot 4x4 in, they look insanely tall.

I'll probably wait until Saturday to frame in the floor so the concrete has time to cure.

The city has purposed the closure of our neighborhood pool. It's one five indoor pools in the city, and a lovely facility.

The city talks a bunch of jive about how the necessary budget cuts are done with an eye toward equity and serving less advantaged communities. The peninsula I live on has one neighborhood with the 2nd highest minority community, a larger amount of households living in poverty than most the city, including Oregon's largest housing project. It's recently been zoned to drastically increase density.

At least three schools hold their competitive swimming practices there. Swimming lessons for kids are always full, you have to register the day classes open if you want to get in. The old folks have water aerobics classes there. I was told that yesterday's class had 58 attendees. Lots of people go there to lap swim.

In short it's a shitty thing to do to our often underserved collection of neighborhoods. The park department has a 6 million dollar shortfall and our pool needs 200k in roof maintanince.

The city wants to increase the police budget by $12 million this year.

I've been spreading the word at my shop and encouraging people to call and write city council. Because my wife works in printing we've been able to donate posters and handbills. My mom who's very active in the League of Women's Voters has been leafleting. I attended the city budget meeting last night and people really came out to let the council know what they thought.

I'm pretty sure 2 out of five member of the council would be happy to push half of the proposed police budget increase toward parks and rec. There is a fair chance that two other will come around.

I had a few things to say about the homeless community today as well but I'm talked out. Generally I'm really coming around to the idea that we all suffer more when we neglect our least advantaged community members than we realize.

Have you known many women who were sexually assaulted and ignored, shamed or blamed? Know anyone who's life was ruined by it, left to be fearful, mentally ill or unable to have well adjusted adult relationships?

I think the current witch hunt is of way less importance than the change it might make in our world.

Too bad for the ones who get cut down in all innocence, we may never know who they are.

Have you ever pressured for sex?

Maybe it wasn't rape but maybe it wasn't really what she wanted.

It's a horrible unfair world.

Maybe this is what has to happen for it to be a little less so in the future.

It didn't seem like it was going to change without some kind of revolution and no revolution happens without some blood in the streets.

I hope a guy in college is afraid when he's trying to coerce my daughter into to doing something she doesn't want to.

I hope that it comes around to making those people with the least power safer from their bosses, their landlords the cops.

My mom, a school teacher who retired to become a librarian, a women of modest demeanor and habits says that she and almost all her female friends have been sexually harassed by cops during traffic stops.

It's been a shitty brutal and fearful world to be a women.

Maybe someday soon, maybe tomorrow it will be a little less so.

My father was an infamous planter of trees.

He never started any by seed but bought saplings from nurseries. He planted thousands of flowers by seed but never a tree.

Once a year or every other year fifty saplings would show up and he'd get to work, planting a tree anywhere he thought would be nice, peoples yards, empty lots, the park and nature preserves. He did all of this under the cover of night, fueled by whimsy and malt liquor with permission never asked or granted.

The cops came by to tell him to cut it out, people aren't allowed to plant trees on public land or something but knowing it was him and proving it was evidently a crime that they weren't ready to assign a detective over. He never did cut it out.

Anyway, I'm sure pops would tell you to quit screwing around with seeds and carefully pick a few saplings of trees that you love.

Just opened the coffee shop, old sweet Bill is my only customer a the moment.

Getting ready for Christmas in general.

Wondering how I'll pay for buying my kid a set of transparent locks and picks for Christmas.

In an exploratory phase of a new business idea. Thinking about selling the shop and converting a movable houseboat into a coffee shop. It might be something that could take off in this goofy town. So many things I don't know about boats and the regulatory tape that would be involved.

I fixed some broken electronics on my espresso machine. This always makes me happy. Most shops dump a lot of money into their machines every year. So far I've gotten by spending less than twenty bucks on parts every so often and doing the repairs myself. The bit I had to fix cost $14 from the espresso supply store but looking around I found an almost perfect substitute for $2.50 with free two day amazon shipping. Self sufficiency makes me happy.

It's my birthday.

I really wanted to go eat at a fancy new Russian restaurant. Turns out it's closed on Wednesdays. Guess I'll try a new Indian restaurant instead.

A simply unacceptable number of "drug" sniffing dogs are really just handler pleasing probable cause machines. They can tell when their handler wants them to alert and a dogs desire to please it's master is hardwired way deeper than any drug detection training.

I'll just throw these few post out there for anyone's perusal. I often like this guys legal writing. I'm sure there are better breakdowns on drug sniffing dogs but his blog was where I started to pay attention to what bullshit drug pups were.

https://blog.simplejustice.us/2012/11/07/to-the-dogs/

https://blog.simplejustice.us/2011/04/27/the-reliable-magic-sniffing-dog/

Working a short day

My wife bought me a hell of a Christmas sweater.

Edit, wtf, why does Dropbox have to go and change stuff.

There is no secret, you just do the next thing you need to do.

Getting started is the hardest part.

The more things you get done the more you realize that you feel way less stressed out after you check things off your list.

Make a list, get the most urgent things or the easiest things done first. Do things that can't be done again first. Doing something that you won't have to do again means you have one source of stress eliminated for good.

Save gaming and watching stuff until the end of the day. Only take a day off if you've accomplished certain goals.

Time spent being depressed is worthless time. You'll never look back at it with any fondness or value. Keep doing stuff while you are depressed. Do the hard stuff while you are depressed. The time is mentally/spiritually valueless so grind out unpleasant tasks, you aren't going to feel better or worse during these unpleasant times but when you come out of them you won't have even more and worse problems to deal with.

Stop making excuses. Go to class every day. It's the easiest way to raise your grade, whatever bullshit excuse you make to not go is just a bullshit excuse.

Better sleep and diet might be good for you but they aren't going to make you more productive. An iron will doesn't give a shit about weather it's well rested or fed, it just gets the next thing it must get done.

Starbucks changed coffee for much of America. Before they spread like the plague coffee was mostly worse (depending on your taste, but decidedly better than Folgers there is room to debate the merits of diner style coffee). They ruled the roost for a long time and people got really used to drinking that which they push. What they push is blends that have little distinctive flavor. It's really hard to provide a consistent cup of coffee with distinctive flavor on the scale they operate, probably impossible (Same coffee plant on different sides of a hill will taste different). They blend a bunch of coffee together to make a pretty muddled average tasting coffee and then burn the shit out of it. Brewed charcoal has an amazingly consistent flavor profile! It's less bitter and acidic than the coffee people two generations ago drank and it's probably the best coffee you can easily get your hands on in most the country.

Starbucks doesn't sell a lot of straight drip coffee. They sell a lot of milkshakes with a bit of coffee in it. They sell a caffeine sugar rush with slick marketing. They pay reality show celebrities to hold their cups logo side out on their Instagram accounts. People drink Starbucks because they identify with the brand and like how caffeine and sugar make them feel. Starbucks moved in two blocks from my shop, it made no difference in my business. A few customers probably went to them for their coffee milkshakes and a few new ones checked me out to spite Starbucks. Starbucks is right down the street selling a lifestyle and I'm over here selling coffee.

Most coffee is mediocre because making good coffee is hard work. I do very little of that hard work, my roaster does a lot of it. He tries a shit ton of coffee, he has two buyers who try more at different ports. Most my coffee comes from one family, farm or co-op. Each coffee is a unique product of how and where it was grown and processed. They pick a few they like, buy up what they can, run it for a few months and hunt up some more. My roaster has 5-7 pour over coffees on his menu at any given time, they are all distinct. I guarantee that I'd hate at least one of them and that someone out there loves the one I hate. How he roasts it is a whole other ball game. A coffee can bit brilliant or horrible depending on how it's roasted. The way he roasts for the brewing equipment I have is different from the way he roasts for the equipment in his shop.

We got a new cat.

Seems like a good cat.

Nothing has improved my mental well being as quickly as hallucinogens did. I'm sure I would have gotten where I was going with time, introspection and maybe a few years on the couch but drugs like shrooms got the ball rolling with their first application.

It was a hard night realizing that I was a petty, aggressive, jealous, judgemental person who was deeply unhappy with my life. The drugs didn't tell me how to act so as not to live in this deeply unhappy state but they showed me my house was in disorder and helped me start rearranging the furniture.

Steve, the most likely outcome of people taking mushrooms is that they will realize that we are all much more alike than we are different. They might realize that we are all part of an interconnected web of life and that by caring for others we care for ourselves and that by caring for our selves and the impact of our actions we care for others. Or they might just watch Def Comedy Jam from the 80's all night and laugh until their stomachs hurt for the next three days.

There aren't a ton of downsides. There are a few but that's true for most things.