This is why I call it "random".

Marvellous times. Today spent all at home. I'm under such extreme, irrational anxiety when I leave the house it's safer to stay in. I'm in the frame of mind right now where to walk out is to make myself "vulnerable" to "things" -- outside forces, like lightning, earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, famine, nuclear war. You see, from inside those are all just things to watch through my windows. The Mexican neighbours' kids might offer me meat or green chiles from the grill which would mean I'd have to be social which I can not bear. They did invite me -- worse than a lightning strike -- and I was as nice as I could be but I turned down the offer. I am a fool. It smells so good it hurts. But I can't bear to do it. I put some rocks around one of my cactuses and went right back indoors. I've finally got it to where I can walk out buckets of water to a single spot near the back door and irrigate the whole front garden without wasting any steps or water.

Not smoking on weekends. Am now pretty well established as a weekend nonsmoker. Ridiculous state of affairs if ever there was one, but there you have it. Spend all week undermining my own health and all weekend with a racing mind because I will not smoke. I'm dragging out the withdrawl and going back to smoking which is nastier to start up each and every time and then starting "not smoking" fresh from scratch again and always getting nowhere (at least so far). If I can make it three days or a week without smoking myself I'll be fine. I hate how much of my time and effort and energy goes into dealing with addictions 'cause it really is one of the lowest forms of human endeavour. I guess the lesson in that should be "don't smoke that next cigarette, then, and in a week or two or so it will hardly come up at all". I'm around smokers at work and at home so that can make it harder, though in theory it's not my business if other people want to be stupid. Heh.

I've got cigarettes in the house but I won't smoke 'em. If I do it'll be three times as hard to not smoke the next time I do this. What makes it *pleasant* is I *feel* the poisons leaving my body. Really the not smoking is sane, the smoking is insane; a few hours or days with a racing and mind and fear of people beats cancer. The little voice creeps in -- "you're failing miserably" and makes me want a cigarette. See I haven't had one since yesterday at this point and in those 24 hours I've done nothing to free India from British rule and therefore I'm not good enough or worthy so the only thing to do is smoke a cigarette. That's about the kind of thinking in my head. That and "the neighbour kids are trying to be freindly and that's a bad thing" thinking. The only way out of it is this sort of "meta-meta-meta" thinking -- getting to where you're always pushing the perspective out a notch or two to judge your judgements and be able to say "this is right" and "that is wrong". Just doing that keeps me more than adequately busy. Weird emotional stuff comes up when I stop smoking that I won't even go into on here.

Just cured my big cast iron skillet. Filled the place with smoke. Awful. Now letting it cool off before I wash it. Then I plan to make some quesadillas in it. Nothing much more here to report.

WOW. Biggest 18-wheeler EVER just turned around out front. Practically a grain silo on wheels. Totally decked out with lights. Trailer said "Oakley, Little Rock", so I guess it's one of Bruce Oakley's.

Amazing speech on KUNM this evening by Greg Palast. *Now* that mysterious letter I got from the Republican party in Texas makes sense. It was *not* standard issue campaign material. I've still got it somewhere and responded with a completely flippant Felix the Cat card to Governor Bush with a copy of the letter enclosed. He's finally stopped sending invitations to events to my parents.

I think he knows he's burning all his bridges and honestly just doesn't care. He's pathologically criminal: nothing anyone tells him will ever change his mind about anything he thinks he knows better about -- it's called "the divine right of Kings" and England fought a bloody civil war to depose James I who claimed the right before the Americans came along and did their own little Declaration of Independce thing way later. Besides being a usurper, the way Governor Bush runs a government is a step back to the sixteenth century. He definitely needs to spend the rest of his life in prison for the purposes of national security.

But back to the letter, and its intended purpose -- it would seem my name was on one of their caging lists. They'd send those letters out with "do nor forward, return to sender" orders on 'em, and if they came back, listed the person's nondeliverable mailing address as a reason to challenge the validity of those votes, concentrating their efforts on racial and ethnic minority precincts (in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act). My address is ridiculously long, but it is deliverable.

2004 was the worst year ever, for me, and the election was a big old ugly part of it. Think "threats, harassment, and destruction of personal property". That bad.

But finally I know what that vaguely threatening letter was really about. At the time I thought it was 'cause they were "concentrating" on me for being a Nader voter or that I was on some list of people who'd visted the governor in Austin on this or that occasion. *That* is "conspiracy theory" thinking at its worst -- pure paranoiac "oh I'm so important that I've got this letter sent to me specifically". When you've got people slashing your tyres and waving hollow-point bullets in your face on a daily basis (as I did, at the time) a little bit of paranoia's understandable.

The real criminal conspiracy was actually much simpler and more rational than what I had imagined. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time -- living with Navahos and Mexicans and queers and Democrats as far as the eye can see.

I've got to call city information. The buzzing light pole is driving me crazy. I don't know who handles it but it's a 24-hour nuisance.