The Creepy Factor

So, Rick Perry declares he's running for President and the media pundits start visibly drooling and swooning and getting shivvers up their spines at all the manly manliness of the Dude, and salivating at now being able to push the election coverage into a simple-minded 24/7 empty of content sports metaphor with ratings and rankings and minute by minute plays to be called, and suddenly, watching him on the news, everything blurs and doubles and suddenly its all deja vuish again as Perry morphs into George Bush and I get cold chills and think, Aw, Gawd, we're gonna now bomb Iran because they may have weapons of mass destruction and then put the war on the national credit card since deficits don't matter if it's a Republican who's running them up, and give more tax breaks to rich people and oh, God, in no time there he'll be in a crotch-stuffed jump suit and  Texas-sized boots, all hat and no cattle, clomping across the deck of an aircraft carrier only to fall to the deck to raise his arms to heaven and thank Jeeeesus for his Victory over the Heathen and, while he's kneeling, to also pray for rain for Texas, then go on to dismantle Medicare, Social Security, EPA regulations, education reforms so as to turn the U.S.A. into one big polluted states-rights successionist Texas filled with minimum wage jobs, a country being run by a handful of wealthy oligarchs overseeing the serfs. 

Oh, Boy, America can't wait. Yeeee haw!

What To Do On A Nice Saturday

First, go to http://www.sanluislighthouse.org/  then call (805) 540-5771 to reserve a tour.  It's $20 per person.  The Trolley Departs 12, 1 & 2 pm. on every Saturday from a parking area outside Avila Beach (Directions will come with your reservation confirmation) .  Docent led tours are about 1 1/2 hours. 

The lighouse was built in 1890, closed in 1974, was granted to the San Luis Harbor District in 1992, in 1995 Point San Luis Lighthouse Keepers formed to restore and manage the light station.  The trolly tours started in 2010.  Don't miss this one.

If you were at lightkeeper in 1890, or the lightkeeper's wife,

Here's what you'd see coming up the wagon road from Avila Beach

And here's what you'd see walking up to your front door.

And here's what you'd cook breakfast, lunch, dinner on.  And heat dish water and bath water on. It ran on coal. 

And here's where'd you wash up, with hot water from the stove.

And then you'd sit in the livingroom in front of the coal stove.

And here's what you'd see up in the tower while you were cleaning the Fresnel lamp.

And here's the beautiful Fresnel lamp and pendulum that turned the great lamp.

And here's part of the steam run machinery that ran the great foghorn that boomed out across the sea, keeping ships from harm on dark and stormy nights.

And if you were the lightkeeper's 10 year-old daughter, here's what you'd see as you left your home to catch the boat that met the train at the foot of Avila's pier that took you into San Luis Obispo for a big day out in the big city.

Grab the Plant Food

Run, do not walk, run over to http://www.sorcererproductions.org/ ,or visit them on Facebook, then call the Clark Center box office at 489-9444 (Mon-Fri 12-6, Sat 12-4) and get tickets for the Sorcerer Production's peformance of "Little Shop of Horrors.  It'll be playing there Aug 12 - 28 on Friday, Sat (two shows) and Sunday matinees.

Sorcerer Productions has a great line up for the upcoming season and if "Little Shop" is any indiction of what this outstanding ensemble can do, the audience is in for some wonderful theatre. Everything about this production is top notch.  It was a fast, funny, fantastic evening of theatre.  Do not miss it.

FEED ME!

OK. What In Hell Was THAT All In Aid Of?

Stock market up. Stock market down.  Stock market up. Down. Up. Down.

Not a single shoe did the Stock Market manufacture.  Not a bridge, a road.  It planted no crops, taught no child, ministered to no sick person.  It didn't build a single house, repair a single car, machine a single die, pour so much as one ingot of steel. 

It did absolutely nothing to rebuild America.  It has now even become uncoupled from "real value," "real businesses," "real things," and is simply a big casino for a tiny handful of The International Monied Class. The disconnect is dangerous for America because "real" people have bought into the notion that somehow they are part of the International Monied Class, that the market will affect their real life, that in pandering to Wall Street, Congress (a wholly owned subsidiary of both Wall Street & Multi-national corporations --Which, as Mitt Romney reminded an outraged senior citizen in Iowa, "are people," as in "Corporations are people."), is somehow going to "help" the average working stiff.  It won't. 

So decoupled has Wall Street become from reality, that stocks that used to be valued and traded based on  actual value, have now become disconnected algorithms -- meaningless bits of data moving at the speed of light, split second speculation based on . . .  split second speculation, pure gambling and gaming of the system, totally divorced from the real Wealth of Nations, a con game that enriches a few at the expense of everyone else.

Matt Taibbi is right: America has now become Griftopia, a nation of grifters, addicted to the blinking Big Spin, frantically buying lottery tickets, penny-ante day traders, eyes glued to the streaming stock numbers, dreaming of the big payday that will never come because in Griftopia, the Street is being run by and for the benefit of a handful of major players.  And as for the "real" people?  They're the mooks and marks.

Yowsa, yowsa.  Step right up.    

Uh, Wanna Run That One By Me One More Time?

If all six Republican apointees to the New! Improved! Super Mini-Me Congress have signed Grover Norquist's Blood Oath to never, ever raise taxes, and this super committee is supposed to be one of those "Let's Solve The Budget Deficit Problem Committee Wherein Everything's On The Table," how's that gonna work?

Shall we start taking bets now?