Off the keyboard of William Hunter Duncan

Published on Off the Grid in Minneapolis on December 7, 2012

Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner

Sometimes I get so angry. Like last Thursday; I think the trigger was a Twix bar I ate after lunch. I was increasingly angry at work, through the afternoon, until I got home at 4:20 like I do every day, and puffed. I puffed alot! And I got ANGRIER; that’s never happened before!? So I went and bought some beer, and smoked some more, and cleaned my garage, and sang and danced, in preparation for this.

Which cast-iron Kodiak stove I got, for the price of a 12-pack of Michelob Golden Light. From my neighbor. Turns out he has a potentially working furnace he doesn’t want sitting in his dining room. That should solve the heating problem, temporarily. I’m not going to pull a permit for that either.

I got angry again yesterday. We’re behind schedule, in our department at big bank, not because we are slow, but because the bulk of the work arrives at the beginning of the month, it is due in seven days and we don’t usually see much of it, until it has “aged” five days. We were asked early, to quicken our pace, in the morning “huddle.” I did, and found myself becoming increasingly histrionic about it (which may be why I sit at the most awkward, out of sight work station in the department), waiting as I am so often, for the network. Here I am, in the “morgue”, the “meathouse” of one of the largest banks in the world, asked to do more and remember more, for less return, than any job I have ever had, in the the thirty to forty sum odd jobs I have had; and oh my god, the irony, that I should be angry that I can’t audit home loans in foreclosure faster! One might imagine that the intranet/network for such a big enterprise as one of the largest banks in the world, would work better than Minneapolis city wireless at its best, but you’ld be wrong. But then, in the surreal world I now inhabit, literally half the people on the floor and all their belongings can be there on Friday, and gone including the computers, Monday, and no one else left on the floor will be overheard talking about it, this whole week.

Then at lunch yesterday, my only real friend in the department, Shelly, came to me in the lunchroom crying. Auditing a loan, and indexing electronically eight of the nine documents, she got distracted, and forgot whether or not she had imported them into the system. Thinking she was being due diligent, she imported them again. They appeared in the system as duplicates. She was given eight errors. Mind you, we can only score one good point per loan worked, which means it was like the last eight loans she audited correctly, had been counted against her. The expected threshold is 99.5% correct. Shelly would have otherwise been 100% for the month. The errors brought her down to 85%, which could take awhile for Shelly to recover from, perhaps months. (She is my friend because she is the sweetest one there, I think, and I can talk to her about whatever. Which as you might imagine, is rarely light material. LOL

I found out after lunch, they had given me three errors on one loan, for the same reason.

This sort of petty shit (the vulgar scoring process, not me caring about it) comes from outside the department, of course. The woman responsible is the same one responsible for us not being able to eat anything at our work stations, or keep any personal possessions there, and we HAVE to use the under counter keyboard trays (which rules I break daily), and black dude can wear a coat patterned in marijuana leaf (LOL), and hoodies are fine, but I can’t wear my Smartwool hat to comfort my bald noggin in the drafty cold (which rule I have kept to, though I think it’s bullshit). I mean, for fuck’s sake, we are FORECLOSING ON HOUSES. But then, I had my first fugitive fuck you you deserved it, the other day, a first loan for something like $472,000, with a “subordinate” loan of $187,000 at 9.75%, some rancho wtf other el lookitme palatial boxfortards. LOL.

Excusing myself, what?

Of course then I come home and read this guys blog. Reader beware, do not drive through Collinsville, Illinois. The police there are thieves (real pirates don’t work for Authorities.) You can bet too, if it’s happening in Collinsville, it’s happening elsewhere – out-of-state, older model vehicles, cops looking for, or planting marijuana, so they can seize the vehicle and everything in it. Such are the confiscation laws nationwide. It gets a lot uglier than that, in Griggs’ blog. Like I told a friend, who said he could see reasons for drones, for law enforcement – nothing good AT ALL can come from militarizing the police. Which has been done, and is being done, all over, by the Fedz. And if you believe this, every digital communication you ever send from this point on, will be recorded and stored, so that, should you find yourself at odds with the government for any reason, they can download your digital communication history, and use it in the way that people wield such power. I will say though, the fact that Minneapolis just hired our first gay female police chief, assuming she isn’t just another protector of the brotherhood, and the fact that Minnesota didn’t alter its Constitution for the sake of gay baiting, is a sign that Minnesotans haven’t entirely lost their minds.

I mean, aside from the fact that it’s still legal in this state for the police to come in my house and take my house from me, because I smoke marijuana. Meanwhile the Fedz and SaviorO are conspiring a show of force, against the states Washington and Colorado, to make it clear who is king and who cannot smoke pot. Meanwhile, the State’s legislatures conspiring behind the scenes, an economic coup, for the likes of ArchersDanielsMidland, Cargil, Monsanto et al (Only State licensed growers, distributors, sellers etc.)

That plant will grow just about anywhere. It is the most useful plant on the planet. But that’s the thing, and they know it intuitively. If people started growing it, and exploring it’s potential economically, as well as consciously, you would have a Revolution in no time at all. LOL.

Consider this guy, for a moment. You may find him perculiar, or not, whatever, he ran a tea house. He taught tea ceremonies. His tea house was a hub of the arts in San Francisco (until the Fedz stepped in.) And because he distributed, or didn’t, it doesn’t seem clear even after a second trial, LSD and MDNA, the State has decided to put him in federal prison for 10-15 years? Aside from the fact the guy looks like he weighs about a buck-twenty, who do you suppose he was distributing this LSD and MDNA to, if he was? Artistic people. Dancers and music makers and such. Tim Leary is reported to have said, LSD occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who haven’t taken it. I never have, but I’ve smoked enough pot and that one shroom I took, to understand that the reason the State puts 120 lb taoist tea hosts in federal prison for 10-15 for distributing LSD and MDNA, is because IF LSD and MDNA were widely available, there would be a Revolution in no time at all, and it wouldn’t look anything like the sixties. I don’t know what it would look like, but I bet it would look a lot more reasonable about what we face as a species, and a lot more techie than you think. Just what we need right now, actually. But probably, a lot of people don’t want to get high, for all the truth that would be revealed about the situation.

Anyway, I say REVOLUTION. I say, open those gates. I say, call off the dogs. If I want to grow, distill, create whatever I want here, to explore my consciousness, to share what I have with my friends, what man anywhere, has the right to say that I cannot? As for God, God emerged from hallucinations. Which is why I don’t ask permission to put a woodstove in, or a new furnace, or to explore my consciousness. Which woodstove btw has changed the whole course of the plan for this residence. More on that to come.

Speaking of angry, I’ve been thinking a lot about the food issue. I told a friend the other day, how fun would it be to descend on a modest glass facade office building, and re-fit it, into a tiered perch (fish) farm? He agreed, that between the two of us we could probably find a couple dozen guys with various expertise, who would show up tomorrow. He asked, if I could wave a magic wand to fix the food situation, what would I do? I replied, that I would buy all land within a hundred miles of downtown Minneapolis, that is currently dedicated to industrial corn and soybean production, and I would offer it to young families and groups of people willing to live and build sustainable/solar structures on it, and grow healthy food for as many as they could, w/ zero interest loans, w/ a negative-interest incentive if they pay more each season, with forgiveness in the event of adverse weather, or extraordinary success in the way of community building.

What say you, hedge fund fuck? Computer guru philanthro egghead bee-illionaire? I know, you can come work with me in the chop shop at big bank. You can sit at the work station next to me, we can talk about reality (don’t worry, no one will hear, just about everybody is plugged in with earbuds or headsets.) You can sleep on the futon at my house. In the morning, we can bike to the bus station, maybe on my tandem; you can sit in back wearing the mad scientist wig. We’ll get drunk by the stove in my garage on weekends and talk about life. After about six months of that you might be ready to redeem yourself. Maybe. Do something meaningful with all that cash, before it’s gone.

As if on cue, about the food thing, Peter started a most fascinating thread on hydroponics, on the Doomstead Diner. Peter’s a techie genius living on the shore of a Pacific inlet, north of Vancouver Island. They see week long fogs, and there’s no road access, so fresh veggies are dear. He started experimenting, growing indoors, and I know I was amazed with what he showed us. Eggplant? Avocado? RE, Head Admin, said he’d finance a similar set-up here in the “McHovel,” as a kind of Minneapolis Chapter of the Doomstead Diner Hydroponics Project, so look for that around the equinox, this spring. It would be nice to juxtapose against the progress,and work, of the garden.

So, I don’t know. Anger can be productive sometimes. A kind of preparatory fire?

Hard to manage though, once let loose. Good to be balanced, earth, air and water.