dannyman.toldme.com

St. Patrick’s Day

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/18/st-patricks-day/

My second shift tonight was pretty nice. Smaller boat, smaller crew, St. Patrick’s Day celebration! I had a hearty meal of corned beef, potatoes, salad, and carrots up in the pilot house. There was considerable activity at the Port of Oakland, giant container ships attended by beautiful white cranes, pulling containers on and off the waiting ships one after another: zip, zip, zip, zip! I saw one ship with a bunch of Hanjin containers, and I was thinking “Hanjin, Hanjin … Han Chin? Han Chinese?”

I got into a discussion with one of the guests who was also standing at the stern, watching the port. Those ships are from the other side of the Pacific! Those containers are International trade – goods, which employ people. Containers of hope floating across the ocean of a troubled world.

Jessica lost her retail job today. While she was dismissed for performance reasons, I suggested that he may have been looking for a pretext to cut staff without resorting to layoffs, on account of Unemployment Insurance premiums being based on claims made against an employer. I hope she’ll be okay.

It was a laid-back, middle-aged crowd who ate well and drank well and danced only a little. At the end of the night the tips were split four ways among the service staff. $22 in my pocket sure feels good.

Feedback Welcome

What You Can Do

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/18/what-you-can-do/

Whatever your feelings on the coming war, bear in mind that you can make the best of a bad situation.

You can strike a decisive blow for that which is good and decent about our country and give a pint if you can. With the military deployment, our blood supplies are stretched all the more thin: the Pentagon plans ahead for the fact that we’re going to lose quite a bit of it in the desert sands.

http://www.redcross.org/donate/give/

The nation needs your blood. If they don’t want your blood, for whatever reason, they can probably use your money, or your time. If you click that link at the bottom, www.givelife.org, you can register and search local blood drives online! Yow!

Feedback Welcome

Rachel Corrie’s Legacy

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/20/rachel-corries-legacy/

Say what you might about the folly of getting in the way of bulldozers, but thanks to the power of the Internet, and international travel, Rachel Corrie provides us with an insight into life in the occupied territories. If you’re going to risk your life and die doing something, the cause of helping the world understand itself is certainly a noble and worthy one.

Feedback Welcome

Response of an American Citizen on the Morality of the Iraq War

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/20/response-of-an-american-citizen-on-the-morality-of-the-iraq-war/

From an e-mail responding to an Argentine friend who is suddenly extremely upset about the War, typing in all caps and on the cusp of anti-Semitism. I try to explain things from the perspective of an American Citizen:

Changing Iraq’s government is only one reason I support the War. We strengthened Saddam’s hold on power when he fought Iran, we left him in power in 1991, when we shouldn’t have. America is already responsible when he tortures Iraqis, just as we are responsible for Pinochet’s crimes. In removing Saddam, we are trying to right a wrong that is our doing. Just as it is wrong to go to War, and it is wrong to impose our will on other peoples, it is also wrong to strengthen a brutal leader and then ignore the suffering of his people, it is also wrong to leave that leader with weapons that he could sell to terrorists, it is also wrong to believe that “containment” will work when it has apparently only further strengthened the bad guy and increased the suffering of the people, and it is also wrong if you believe that you will have to go to war to wait longer to fight when waiting will only make the situation worse. I see two sets of wrongs to choose from. The lesser of these evils is the “right” answer, in my mind, to a question that has no true answer.

As for the Palestinians, nobody has rationalized a solution to help them out. It is the Israelis who are rightly scared of the Palestinians, and the Palestinians who are rightly angered that nobody in the world will ever help them. We are guilty of Palestinian suffering because of our aid to Israel. The rest of the world, especially the Arab world, is guilty of Palestinian suffering because they will not give the Palestinians refuge. If America proposed a solution to this problem, I might support that as well. But we haven’t, and there are a million other injustices that are not being addressed, so I don’t see what the problems of the Palestinians has to do with America’s entanglements in Iraq. I am neither an Arab nor a Jew: I’m an American who is, as always, trying to figure out if the things my leaders do in my name is right or not.

Feedback Welcome

Dispatch from the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/21/dispatch-from-the-dawn-of-the-twenty-first-century/

I just finished watching a movie, so I decide to flip channels and check on the War. The satellite television is tuned to BBC America, and is in the middle of a live audio report from a British reporter who is reporting from the front lines as Marines take in Iraqi Prisoners of War.

The War in question is being broadcast live around the world. It is being waged so far with an eye towards avoiding not only allied casualties, but civilian casualties. At the same time cities around the world are dealing with protesters, who oppose the war because they see it as the precedent of imperialism on the part of the contemporary empire.

The empire regards itself as a fairly benevolent, often isolationist Republic that is being forced into acting in this war on the grounds that since it is the world’s great empire, it is threatened by barbarians who pose a magnified threat because in our time, there are weapons of such fantastic destruction and cruelty that would be used without warning.

I think a good reason to have children, is so that if I live long enough to meet them, my grandchildren ought to blow me away on a consistent basis.

Feedback Welcome

Blix Notes Iraqi Weapons Violation

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/22/blix-notes-iraqi-weapons-violation/

According to the New York Post:

Even though he wanted more time for inspections, Blix said yesterday that he didn’t know if he could ever be sure that Iraq wasn’t hiding the illegal missiles.

Feedback Welcome

Cheap Entertainment

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/22/cheap-entertainment/

So, Adam clued me into a website called PhotoSIG, which allows you to upload photos to be critiqued. You can only upload so often, which is actually kind of cool, so I started with my picture of the couples kissing goodbye at a Berlin train station.

The web site itself is a pretty darned reasonable time-waster, and time is something I have a surplus of these days.

I’ll post more photos directly into the log sometime soon. I went over to San Francisco yesterday to interview at a newly-opened Cafe-Restaurant-Cocktail lounge across from the newly-opened Asian Art Museum. The interview was weird, as if they had blown me off before I even sat down. Oh well, I got to admire and talk to some good-looking women while I was waiting. Then I went down to the demonstrations to watch the cops run around the place in riot gear. Got some pictures of them arresting people at a sit-in. Some excitement for a Friday evening.

Feedback Welcome

I Really Hope I’m Wrong, But …

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/23/i-really-hope-im-wrong-but/

Feedback Welcome

This Modern World

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/24/this-modern-world/

Dave Bort has recently put some effort into making some very funny cartoons. I’m not Dave Bort. This means I get plenty of sleep, but I haven’t put enough serious effort into developing my ideas. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t idly mess around once in a while. I thought I’d borrow from Tom Tomorrow:

It was actually good practice with the GIMP such that by the later frames I was making effective use of moving layers around and whatnot.

Feedback Welcome

Selling my Yen

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/24/selling-my-yen/

Feedback Welcome

<pre />

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/24/pre/

If I cry now is it for fear
  or joy?
 Elation or    Depression
   Peace or War
Idleness or  Opportunity
         ?

I have no lover, can I not love all?
They love me back, subtly and
                 I will also feel scorn
    but that too is a feature of
 Romance.

E pluribus unum
          The many but no one
                   all for me
all for me up to me all the time
with no relief except in sleep,
work or pleasure I can't
so well afford.

   cant cry why would I nothing going
                 on emotions -not Today
                       perhaps Tomorrow

                 I'll follow the sun

Feedback Welcome

An Exchange

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/24/an-exchange/

I walked down the hill a little earlier today. Washington Mutual doesn’t do currency exchange, but Bank of America does. I had two Â¥10,000 and a Â¥1,000 to exchange. Bank of America charges a 1% transaction fee to those who don’t hold an account. My answer was that I’d rather pay the 1% than be broke. The guy went to get the exchange rate book, and a big color catalog of what different currency notes look like. I had figured that at 120Â¥ to the dollar, the Â¥20,000 ought to earn me $160, with another $8 for the Â¥1,000.

“Sixteen dollars and thirty-three cents.”

“That’s the transaction fee?”

“No, that’s the exchange.”

He re-did his math and decided that I was in line for $163.50. “How would you like your money?”

“Twenties.” The yuppy food stamp.

He counted out more cash than I’ve seen in a good long while now, and I remarked that I was going to fill my tank.

The 1% charge was waived. I attribute this to a combination of his mis-placed decimal point, and to the impression I got that he was sweet on me. He suggested I open a checking account, now with no fees. I responded that I just might do that in the future when I had some money to put into such a thing. As it was, I was immensely pleased that the exchange cost me less than $5.

Flush with cash, and tomorrow my day of reckoning before the administrative law judge, who may determine once and for all my eligibility for unemployment benefits, which could see me with $2,000 pretty quickly, and a lot less worried about problems.

But what I have other ideas I want to play with now. No more War news for a while, just me, Michael’s stereo, a comfortable office chair, and an Internet terminal. Maybe I can get some ideas worked out.

It is nice to have money in one’s pocket.

Feedback Welcome

Human Shield Meets Pro-War Baghdad

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/24/human-shield-meets-pro-war-baghdad/

I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad – a taxi driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I was American and said, as we shields always did, “Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good”. He looked at me with an expression of incredulity.

Daniel Pepper
I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam

Feedback Welcome

Meanwhile, Back in Jordan …

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/24/meanwhile-back-in-jordan/

The official and private views of some ranking Jordanian officials appear to be diametrically opposed. Officially, they condemn the war and say they are “deeply troubled” about the repercussions of the war on the region, and describe the situation as “critical.”

Privately, and not for attribution, they say the United States is developing a new opportunity for the Middle East. Said one former prime minister, “If the U.S. can get a new Iraq to recognize Israel as a quid pro quo for a final Palestinian settlement, others will fall into place — Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf states. Iran would then have to pull back its military support for Hezbollah.”

Lucky Break for Jordan
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
UPI Editor at Large

Feedback Welcome

Approaching Verdicts

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/26/approaching-verdicts/

So, today I had my hearing before the administrative law judge regarding my unemployment eligibility. He makes his decision by the 28th, and I should receive the letter within a week.

It doesn’t sound too good. The letter of the law is that eligibility is contingent upon involuntary separation from your very last employer. Off the record, it was suggested that my error was in filing for unemployment immediately upon returning to the area, after previously quitting from the Pizza Place, which I had argued was only temporary employment. Had I taken a one-day temp job, I’d again be eligible. Weird laws.

Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.

In the afternoon I had a reasonably positive interview with a swanky restaurant / bar / night-club in the Metreon. Five positions, one hundred applicants, I figure I can make it to a pool between 15 and thirty for round two, which is supposed to happen in the next few days, at which point I’ll definitely be employed, or not. I reckon my odds are roughly 20% of landing the job. This is actually pretty heartening under the circumstances.

What I appreciated about the day was that both of my judges were left-handed. I called my afternoon interviewer on this, figuring it doesn’t hurt to identify a point of solidarity on our shared minority status. After all, what good is a waiter in a swanky place who can’t schmooze?

If I don’t have a sufficient source of income in the next week or two, I’ll likely be making the decision to leave the area, probably returning to Illinois, where I’d be close to family and have a lower cost-of-living threshold to worry about. It’ll probably take a week to secure some gas money, and plan a little shindig.

For those who feel they’re not making enough decisions lately, you can judge my rhinoceros.

In unrelated news, I bought a bunch of vegetables today. I felt like some hippie freak, approaching the cashier with a variety of veggies, pita, hummus, and of course, some beer. Time to snack.

Feedback Welcome