Phil Rose's Bloggy Bletherings

I am hunting for anyone local who is looking to earn some money working in my yard. Heavy digging involved. There may be 6-8 hours of work available at $20/hour.

Let me know if you are interested! Thanks,

Phil

Thanks all but I have got this sorted so no need for anyone now. All good, stand easy.

I just submitted this to Change.gov. If anyone can go and Vote it Up that wold be great. Let's all have free solar panels. I know I want them.

Phil

I had an idea yesterday that I would like to share. I recently looked into getting solar panels set up on my home but it seems that it would cost between $20,000 and $60,000 to do so which is just out of my range. $20,000 would reduce my bills by 50% and $60,000 by 90%.

How would it be if there was a simple and straightforward scheme which homeowners could apply for which would provide a grant for 50% of any costs associated with getting solar panels attached to ones home and an interest free loan on the other half which was spread out in such a way that the homeowners monthly outlay on their electricity bill and repayments on their loan combined was roughly the same as their electricity bill alone had been in the past?

This would allow people to get solar power into their homes with no initial outlay at all and with no monthly increase in their outgoings. Then, ten or twenty years down the line they would own the panels outright and would see a sharp drop in their outgoings. The benefits to the environment are self evident as are the contributions to ending this countries reliance on foreign oil production. There would also be a positive effect on the economy in terms of jobs created in production and installation.

The initial cost is what keeps most people from getting solar panels. If there was a simple scheme like this that would allow people to get into solar with no outlay, I thinkit would be very popular.

Thanks,

Phil Rose

I just sent this to the Bellingham Police Department. I'll let you know if they respond.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing having seen this article regarding the theft of a police car which was left running beside the Horseshoe Cafe. I know that in some states it is illegal to leave a car running unattended but have been unable to discover whether this is the case in Washington. I do know how frustrating and unpleasant it is to see cars left unattended and running. Firstly there is the health danger of breathing in carbon monoxide, particularly for my six year old daughter. Secondly there is the environmental damage caused by such behavior. Thirdly we have reached and passed the point of peak oil and are fighting several wars (wars which, incidentally, I remember the Bellingham Police Department being quite vocal in their support of, via the honking of their horns back at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq) to maintain our dominance thereof. Fourthly there is the issue of the waste of taxpayer purchased fuel and the laziness and careless misuse of equipment paid for by the taxpayer. And finally I also believe it is dangerous to leave a vehicle running due to the possibility of it slipping accidentally into gear.

If I owned a car and had it stolen having left it running in the alley beside the Horseshoe Cafe I would fully anticipate a certain lack of sympathy from the police department for my foolish behavior. I just hope that the officer involved is more careful with the other potentially lethal weapon that he carries.

I look forward to your thoughts on this matter.

Phil

The slide towards the horrible truth may be beginning.


Geithner, Summers Rumored for Treasury Position

Meanwhile, names are already surfacing for the Treasury Secretary position. Candidates for the post include New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, who headed the Treasury under President Bill Clinton. Summers resigned as president of Harvard University two years ago amidst uproar over his suggestion that women have less innate scientific ability than men. In 1991, while working as chief economist for the World Bank, Summers wrote an infamous memo that advocated exporting the pollution of industrialized countries to the third world, which he called “underpolluted.”

Underpolluted??? The third world is underpolluted???

So John McCain is saying that “I want to do about half as good as Sarah did against poor old Joe Biden,"

Not sure quite what that would look like but Allison and I posited this morning that it might involve coming out onto the stage, falling down, pooping himself and then crying and saying 'Russia from my house'.

I hope he does half as 'good' as 'Sarah'. too.

The national debt clock in Times Square has run out of digits and is going to have to be replaced with a bigger one.

Thanks to Democracy Now for cheering me up with the lighter side of life, as usual!

Phil

So we had a meeting at the Drop tonight and the consensus is that we will make it a simple, a gentle, a fitting and beautiful memorial to the late great Jimmy Henry by going to the Grand at 7pm on Friday and drinking PBR and eating the cheapest burgers on the menu. I will also bring some of his proetry and if anyone wants to read any of it that would be fabulous.

So, are people still interested in doing something for Jimmy Henry? If so I would like to propose that we meet at the Black Drop on Monday next Monday at 6pm and aim to have something happen at the Grand on the Friday. Is that too soon? Are people up for that?

Phil

I got a call today from a woman in Duluth, MN. She was the owner of a second hand clothing store and knew Jimmy Henry. She called to tell me that he died a week or so ago. He died in his sleep from a coronary presumably brought on by too many years of alcohol, meth, tobacco and pain med abuse. Many of you may remember Jimmy as the crazy ass motherfucker who ran the inimitable store, Blue Moon Clothing on Holly. I know a lot of people had a problem with Jimmy; he was not the easiest friend I ever had. I remember having to take firm lines with him as he asked me to drive him to ridiculous places and I once did drive him to the god-forsaken wastes of the arse end of Portland for some crappy poetry show at which he passed out in the back of my car and snored uncompromisingly all night. He was not the easiest of men but he was also a man who never failed to make me laugh, a man who clearly and openly cared very deeply for me, a man who was so sad on so many levels and a man with more talent than he knew what to do with and a terrible urge to destroy himself and all he had. I remember the frenzied dance around the trampled electricity bill on the last night in Blue Moon before he was evicted.

And so he went to San Francisco where he had a lunatic idea that he would stand on street corners and recite poetry and the good bergers would stop and throw him money. They didn't. They passed by and ignored the loonie. Then he was beaten up and had his money and id stolen and called me in tears and I bought him a Greyhound ticket to Portland. There he bought a stolen bicycle in an alley and began his journey, 50 miles a day, to Duluth. He would stand at the bottom of hills with his bike and a sign labeled 'LAZY' and get rides up to the tops.

To the end he anticipated that he was only days away from being published and that greatness awaited. He was already great but nobody knew it but himself and occasionally me.

And so he's dead. Not gone, not resting, not passed on. He'd hate those sanitised euphamisms. Jimmy is dead and I can't stop crying. He'll never again call me with some incomprehensible and rambling gobbledigook poem or some succinct piece of pure brilliance. He'll never again tell me with unquenchable enthusiasm what a great idea it would be for him and me and his alcoholic cousin to go on a two week canoeing expedition. He must have known I'd never go. Poor Jimmy.

When I returned from Burning Man there was an envelope from him with a poem in it about me and my recent tragedy along with a $10 bill to pay for the domain registration of his site (JimmyHenry.com). (I think he saw that site as being like the fire on the cliff in Lord of the Flies- let it go out and you'll DEFINITELY not going to be saved). I'll frame the poem and I've put aside the money to go to the Grand and drink it in his name. In the meantime, here's a poem he wrote which will be read at his memorial. I hope at least some of it may be acted upon. I loved you Jimmy, I wish I could have made you famous.

Like the old Joke Goes, one Less Drunk Irishmen

At my funeral beverages will be served in forty ounce, covered brown, passed around bottles,

At my funeral smoking will not only be allowed but required,

At my funeral conversations will include

"I just wonder where he left my fucking car."

"wanna lap dance, honey?"

"Bullshit, if they were such great friends, where's Mr. Wayne Newton now?"

"Most people; tragically Jimmy included, don't realise how thin a tissue the rectal wall is. And a full size bowling ball traveling with that force and velocity, poor sick bastard, he didn't stand a chance."

At my funeral and in accordance with my last will and testament, the first three homeless schizophrenics that show up will each receive two white bread only, individually wrapped tuna fish sandwiches, one package of Twinkies and one fully automatic AK47 along with a generous supply of both methamphetamine and armor piercing bullets.

As night comes at my funeral most will leave, the paparazzi curiosity seekers, those suckers from Visa. The ones who stay, true friends, true artists and some very wide awake homeless guys. True friends, true artists and a way late, apologetic Wayne Newton. True friends, true artists who realise that life, like art, is created by taking chances to feel not fear all the world has to offer.

At my funeral, like my life and everyone else’s, the party's going to have to end and the party's going to end in the only way any good party I've ever been to does. A patrolman’s car, the spotlight in the night, his voice amplified by his 5-O car speaker. "You’re all under arrest for trespassing. This golf course is private property."

See what happens when the heavily armed, heavily irritated wide awake homeless schizophrenics don't want the fun to end?