Who's the decider?

I reverted to my old blog layout and it all seems to be fine. Goodness knows white text on a black background isn't all that earthshaking a design concept, but I'd tweaked the templates madly, though it may not be apparent at first glance. That's how I do things, and I like things to be just exactly so after I spend a certain dozen number of hours making things look like I want them to look on the assumption that I'll never have to work on it again unless I want to.

Google has provisionally redeemed itself. It's not often I'm told I can "revert" and actually find myself able to do so without having to track down all the source code I copied and changed from mutiple sources months back.

So the hospital calls from last night are no big deal in the end. Not that I don't want to sue Las Palmas for mental distress, but after a few hours of calling here and there I figured out no one I really know is in hospital and it's either a text-message spam or a clerical error. Fuck you, Las Palmas, either way, for not returning my calls saying at least "whoops, sorry".

Then I call Charles and to my surprise, he's scared out of his mind as I talk to him.

Originally, the premise of my calling him was arranging for me to drop off an article entitled "The Alchemist" (which appeared in the 20 March, 2006 issue of the New Yorker) because I'm convinced that he and the subject of this article (the auctioneer at Christie's in New York) are closely enough related that they must be long-lost twins.

As it so happens, however, I just happen to call him at *the* exact moment his whole neighbourhood (a mile north of mine) is cordoned off on lockdown by APD searching for two presumably armed suspects, fleeing from the sight of a fatal police shooting of the allegedly armed driver a stolen vehicle in which they had reportedly been passengers near Cochiti Elementary School.

If you think, reading this, that Charles is just one of my crazy freinds, then I invite you to listen to TV News Channel Seven's reporting, to which he held his phone while not wanting to hang up on someone on the outside.

This is the same fellow who first contacted me in October 2005 asking the doorman at Foxes whether he's heard anything of the murder of his friend Carlos Esquibel.

I still get calls from people asking if I know anything about Carlos' murder. If the police are still investigating it, there's precious little evidence of it.

I stay on the phone tonight with Charles 'til he's more-or-less convinced armed thugs won't barge into his house and slit his throat. He's in the process of moving to Colorado, BTW, and I have no doubt this night's incident only serves to reinforce the rightness in his mind of his decision. I can't argue with that.

If Mayor Martin "Chuckles" Chavez *really* ever wants to win the governorship of the State, he'd do *damn* well to spend at least one tenth the time he currently spends on self-aggrandizement (e.g., putting his name on the "safety jackets" of homeless men who wind up dead in traffic accidents repeatedly cleaning up the same stretch of I-40 each and every day) on solving what now amount to multiple homicides directly affecting potential voters.

Went to the KUNM News Department meeting this morning where I'm marginally comforted to hear that the meetings have been an on-again, off-again affair all month and that I haven't missed that much. Such are the joys of volunteer newsgathering.

Then I slept all afternoon, as blissfully as I could through the selective demolition of the factory behind my home, which I hear is slated for demolition in the next few months.

Then went to a meeting at the Peace & Justice Center for the coalition of organizations that's organizing the 17 March march commemorating the 4th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. One guy who, I swear is brilliant, jokingly says we should call it "The St. Patrick's Day Impeachment Parade".

I listen closely to everyone talk back and forth in circles for an hour and a half, over about a dozen possible courses for the demonstration to take, ranging from the impossible (but ideal, if only we could count on half a million people to turn out), through the unlikely but incompatible, to the simple "why bother, everyone protests there every time a baby burps" site across from Frontier.

Finally, I casually say something along the lines of "why not start here and end there", and it seems (subject to permit approvals and possible future changes of mind) that I've singlehandedly decided the start and end point of the next big anti-war/pro-peace/whatever-you-want-to-call-it march and rally.

Who's the decider now, baby?

When I ate at a rare state dinner at the governor's mansion in Austin years ago, you said something stewpid which I won't embarass you by repeating here; but your waitstaff later whispered into my ear, and I quote, "they said to give you anything you want".

Be careful what you tell waiters to promise to your guests on your behalf! On that specific night, I do believe I asked for a third refill of my coffee cup, while being careful *never* to say "that's all, thank you". But that promise still holds, if you ask me, and I'm not done asking for what I want.

Might I trouble you to be so kind as to withdraw all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan without delay? I understand it can't be done overnight, but you can issue the order right now, and I don't think I can really enjoy my dessert knowing you haven't yet ordered them back.

If it starts at Civic Plaza (a desolate, windswept concrete square with underground parking for SWAT teams to hide in while activists make speeches up top, reminiscent of LA's Pershing Square) and ends at Robinson Park ("the hippie park", its reputation from the '60s holding over) then you'll know I set points A and B in a meeting that went back and forth just trying to get things moving forward.

Never doubt what one person can do just by showing up and speaking up.

Oy vey.

I do not like the new blogger templates.

I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.

As it was before: so what if I had to know basic HTML and CSS to get things to look more or less like I wanted them to look in most browsers on most operating systems -- I was free to post several times everyday without fuss, knowing the minimal ads and banners and counters and stuff I wanted would show up *as* I wanted them to show up, without *ever* having to navigate through a whole rigamarole of proprietary copyediting "tools", and could "tweak" column widths and the like with the most basic knowledge of printing. Damn all you fuckin' kids, I *do* know how to edit! I learned from Carl Herzog of Texas Western Press, you fuckin' pricks.

Now suddenly I have to deal with a whole new system. This isn't like when they started using floppy disks in place of the old linotype machine, this is way fuckin' worse.

Where's my "Iraq Body Count" counter? Where's my "US deaths in Iraq" counter? Where's my live-update "cost of the war in Iraq" counter? You get the idea and I hope forgive me if I seem a bit cynical in what's suddenly *not* showing up at all on my blog.

Pain In The Ass: I call it PITA. As opposed, let's say, to PETA, for whom I've certainly never designed websites, I swear, seeing as they're on all sorts of watchlists and whatnot and I've never been called to testify against them.

Losing these various little things in my sidebar that I have painstakingly cobbled together over the last two years may be enough to turn me against Google.

What a system!

Healthcare for money. Love it, love it, love it!

Got off work to find two text messages from Las Palmas Medical Center telling me to call the emergency room. That's in El Paso, where I come from. They were sent at 8:35 PM, hours after the communications and business development office closes, which is the number that they actually told me to call, though the text messages clearly said -- twice -- that the number was the emergency room number.

I know this because after I called the number and let it ring for 3 minutes without getting picked up or transferred to voicemail I called my mother to see if she or her husband were in the hospital, and she checked in the phone book, then called the *actual* emergency room number and was told they *never* do text messages but always phone calls if there *is* a need to make contact. The nurse on duty also said she'd been there all night and had not called any New Mexico numbers.

I call David, three times, and leave messages twice. He doesn't always pick up so maybe it's him, maybe it's not. I don't know anyone else in El Paso well enough for them to land in the hospital with my phone number on their person.

Finally I call "patient information" from a number my mother gives me from the El Paso phonebook, and get transferred to registration. Unlike the number I was told to call, I get answers *immediately*. I ask them who I'm looking for and they don't have a record of him. That's good news. I think. But I don't know, and won't know for sure until I hear back from him. If it *is* him I have no legal standing in relation to him.

Why am I getting text messages three and a half hours after the business office closes telling me to call the business office number *as* the emergency room?

Fuckin' healthcare for money. Love it, love it, love it!

Breaking silence.

The demonstration yesterday drew over 1,500 people. We expected *maybe* 400 and agonized over whether that expectation was "realistic". As it was, it was a perfectly beautiful day and there were enough people in the streets that the cops had to close Central so we could pass. They were fairly cooperative, too. Code Pink did a five-storey banner drop from the balcony at Hotel Blue. About as close to an ideal event of this sort, based on those I have been to. Armen's idea to serve hot chocolate was downright inspired. People got to come out of the house and meet eachother and hear eachother speak and figure out who's really doing what in this town. The rumour is it's the biggest anti-war/pro-peace/call-it-what-you-please rally since the one that occurred on the day the US invaded Iraq, when the police sparked a riot. (By some accounts yesterday's event was bigger.)

CBS Evening News showed the Albuquerque March with that banner (which you can't read in my lousy cameraphone picture, because people are walking all crooked) that says "No More Wars". This is just the head of the march, it snaked for blocks on Westbound Central. They're entering Robinson Park through Central Avenue's brand new shiny roundabout, which no one knows how to use. ("Yield to the left? Huh?")

Danny Hernandez cornered Representative Heather Wilson (R-NM) at some sort of gathering a couple of days before the event and asked her about the possibility of a war with Iran, while telling her (and listeners) that the rally was coming. She said it "isn't likely", which is far from an assurance she'd oppose it if it did, or even acknowledgment that she's heard her constituent's opinions. She's *very* cagey. But how Danny even got a hold of her I have no idea.

The one minor disappointment in all this: I didn't get to cover the rally for KUNM; worse still, apparently no one else did, either. All that research on Iran, and as of yesterday it didn't much matter, 'cause I didn't have a microphone with me right then. Why not? Because I *thought* I sent an email out a week ago requesting a recording kit, but wound up hitting "save" instead of "send". For several days, the notion that I might have done that never occurred to me, and I assumed I had been blackballed. I have been scrambling like mad this month, and missed two News Department meetings. Nothing will keep me away from it tomorrow, though. And this story *won't* "go away". I've also got ideas for new stories, though they have tighter deadlines, being tied to the 60-day legislative session. May be a good thing -- the less time I have to lose myself in the trees, the better.

The whole "No War With Iran" message kinda got lost in the middle of the four or so other themes that all got lumped together under the all-inclusive slogan "No More Wars", but that's OK 'cause it brought *way* more people out than Iran by itself would ever have. And the Iran group got something like 37 groups and organizations signing on to that mission statement we spent two and a half hours crafting on a cold night in December.

It's been a totally chaotic month. I *have* to post, it's part of my sanity.

Then there's the snow. Still on the ground in icy patches from a MONTH ago.

Then there's the new kitten I rescued from the snow drifts, who bit straight through my thumbnail only to tame fairly nicely after all.

Then there's the selective demolition of the factory behind me and the news that my apartment won't be here in May.

Then there's the flooding from two feet of snow on the ceiling dripping SLOWLY through the ceiling over my bed, covering my bedroom floor with filthy water.

Last but not least, I hate to say it, but I quit my job without notice early this month. Bill was great to me but the business was clearly failing and there wasn't money in the bank to pay me for another week of work. I went in to work one Monday and I don't know exactly what happened, but by that evening at home I was punching up and printing resumes and cover letters. I basically "snapped", and just not going in seemed preferable to some of the other things people have done in the mental health billing business when quitting a job (e.g., stealing patient records, sabotaging computers, all par for the course). I was miserable bouncing off the walls and keyboard for a living, since it made doing so for pleasure far less enjoyable. I also realized I *need* to be around people. Not every day, not all the time, but spending entire weeks dealing with only one person is not a situation I even know how to handle.

Anyway -- Bill apparently got spooked, and meaning nothing but the best, I'm sure, didn't call to leave the usual "it's noon, are you coming in today or what?" message, but called me the day *after* I didn't show up to say that because he didn't know where I lived he was filing a missing persons report. Oh my.

I don't doubt he meant well, but that, in turn, spooked me, so I basically "disappeared", which necessarily involves not posting to the blog. (It's like in WWII movies where the submarine camptain says "maintain radio silence" and the whole ship goes comepletely dead in the water without a sound so the people up top don't know where to lob their torpedoes.) Long story short (I'm leaving out some twists and turns and intrigues), he knows I am alive and well now.

I apologize for disappearing like I did, but (a) I can't handle the level of isolation involved and (b) when I hear someone's calling the cops on me I freak.

I'm making progress though. Last time I did this sort of thing, in 2004, Kenneth threatened me with getting pummelled by his "uncle and cousin from Espanola" because I threw his precious couch cushions into the dirt. At least people don't mean me ill anymore, and I'm not *as* crass as to throw couch cushions into the dirt to set off that whole set of chain reactions.

I am now doing the one thing I swore I would never, ever do, because I got fed up with the whole "drop off a resume and call back in two weeks then we'll call you back and we can see if we want to start the five-week interview process or not for this job that's set to start in September for a period of three weeks" game. Fer chrissakes I'm not trying to get a salaried position here, I'm looking for an hourly wage. Don't give me fuckin' runaround. If you do I wouldn't want to work for your sorry ass anyway. And don't assume that just because I know how to look good in a tie that washing dishes is somehow "beneath" me -- some of the most deeply ethical people I've known have been dishwashers.

It's kinda rough for me, too, 'cause I've worked in a bunch of one-of-a-kind places. "OH MY GAWD YOU MADE TORTILLAS AT FRONTIER!?" young girls will scream at me as though they saw some fading remnant of the Beatles in my visage. But employers look at that on a resume and wonder "so he poked doughballs with a stick for nine months, how does that apply to this position, and why would he do such a freak job to begin with?".

Yes, I'm doing *the* one thing (short of dressing hair) that was "so gay" a job I'd never consider doing it, and wound up working at Foxes to prove I wasn't queer, or something.

I'm waiting tables.

I am kind of enjoying it, actually. Rough month on the finances with a week of total unemployment but it's starting to pick up now. Base pay's minimum which sucks but once tips start coming it it's not half bad! The variability from one night to the next is gonna make budgeting tricky, but I think I can do it.

The place is on Central, within walking distance, and has been open for something like 30 years. It's a family business. Like Musso & Frank's, it's a run-down classic, and people debate at length whether it's more run down or more classic, dividing both diners and staff into two distinct schools of thought on the matter.

I love the people I work with. Lots of newbies bail their first night or two when they find out they're making minimum because when they start out bussing tables they're working harder and getting less out of tips. I stuck it out two weeks because, heh, I had no choice! It was that or *no* money, and it's working out OK. I think.

Enough from me for now. I have broken radio silence.

Be well!

Happy new year.

For what it is worth.