Back from tour, unemployed, looking out for what's next. Starting April 12th, we embarked from SF to Amsterdam for the European tour which lasted until we arrived back home on May 8th. Three days later, we drove to LA and did a U.S. tour which brought us back home on June 18th. We have one more show here on 6/26 and then one in New York on 8/5 and then possibly Hong Kong some time in October (though doubtful). It has been a long one and I am adjusting to the concept of being alone for much of the day (while my wife is at work). Nothing has sunk in yet. However, since I last posted that money thing with my old job resolved itself. The Monday morning I was to leave for Europe, a FedEX guy showed up with a check from my old place of employment basically giving me $1200 and a note that said "while we don't agree with your assessment, we have decided to pay you the balance to settle the matter and signing and depositing the enclosed check officially closes the matter," etc. I have since found that my entire former department/office has been laid off, and people are trickling out until the end of the year, as I suspected. After this Saturday's show I will begin dipping my toe into the networking water to see where I land. Mostly it will probably involve a lot of lunches with former coworkers and whatnot. I am not ready for this type of thing just yet and I am not sure what I really want to do. I do know one thing: I will not work anywhere unless the hours begin at 8am or later. There is still a chance I may work for my wife's uncle, but it depends on whether or not he can secure a couple of deals he's been working on with clients of his. I would be a "train the trainer." It also appears we will be moving into her mom's apartment addition once completed down in Santa Clara, rent free for 1-2 years until our debt load is, or close to settled. I have secretly called it a self imposed exile, because we would be far enough away from our circles of friends and normal activities for it to make us feel like we're holed up in the Crimea. That is literally true, I suppose, in that they have done a lot of work in the front and back yard to make it feel like a vacation oasis in the middle of bland suburbia. The front is a series of elaborate fences, lush gardens and interesting Japanese-inspired architecture. The back has a new jacuzzi and I am assuming its surroundings is somewhat similar in concept to the front, though I have not seen it. They are going to build a two story in-law unit adjacent to the garage side of the house. Once completed, we will move in supposedly.

Politically I haven't been that active. I support Kerry, though I am wary of his ability to relate to the average Joe. I wore a "FUCK B*SH" t-shirt during most of our shows on the US tour. It started to smell pretty bad and had to give it a rest, putting my experiment of seeing if I could wear it to every show to the serious test. I signed up as a volunteer for the Kerry campaign, but I am not sure I have the wherewithal to try and raise funds. I may have a lot of time to attend events to see what it's all about, however.

I forgot to mention the landlord dispute my wife and I had with the people that bought the house. Just before I was to leave for Europe, the new landlords, after a series of fits and starts and different stories about how they wanted to move into the place and so on, told us they wanted to raise the rent from $1025 to $1601.40 (adding the 1.40 for extra injury, we gather), well above the Oakland Rent Control amount of 3%. They said they had a loophole for "debt service" costs. We gathered our facts, and exposed their errors in accounting as well as errors in procedure. The hearing took place on 4/28 and we basically won. They wanted to raise the rent in April originally, but now they can't until October, and then only $300, not the $600+ they originally wanted to. They have appealed the decision, but they will probably lose there also, due to the inflammatory remarks made towards the rent adjuster who oversaw the case. In some ways it was probably better that I was not present for the hearing, because my wife is a lot more composed in those situations that I would have been, especially when the husband landlord started insulting my wife at the hearing, as he had done in times before in interactions we've had with them. A classic one was "if you don't like it, there are other places to rent in the city," when she told him that we were not, in fact, responsible to replace the faulty sink. That particular comment was a declaration of war, I said at the time, one which culminated in the hearing we won. When the time comes, they will get what they want, an ability to raise the rent to whatever they want, since we will be moving out soon enough. But I can assure you that the market will not bear $1601.40 a month for this place. Not in this economy. There's a place down the street that has had a sign up for the same amount for over two years now, and it has remained empty the entire time. Good luck Martha C and Alfonso Cortes Ponce!

Ah, a rambling account to be sure. But I've been feeling a little unmotivated and clammed up in the writing department since I returned exactly a week ago from the tour. It's all about the show this Saturday right now and then I will gather my thoughts after what is certain to be a bender of a barbecue at our house the afternoon after the show.

This is the last week of employment. I may cut out early, but I am debating. I sent a nice little diatribe this morning to headquarters. Here is what I said:

"First off, I would like to say that anyone who has worked with me over the past year and a half will vouch for the fact that I am not known as someone who likes to stir things. However, this whole episode has awakened something in me that I feel needs to be put in writing.

After much deliberation and consultation with many folks internally and externally, I have decided that I am not going to sign the attached "authorization for recoupment" form, as I find it offensive that you should try and strong arm me into doing so. I feel like I am being treated poorly for a mistake that was essentially yours. You are making me feel like I am stealing something from you when the reality of the situation is that the money and time I "owe" you is due to no fault of my own. I respectfully submit that you write off the amount equal to the eleven days.

If you take a good look at the inefficiencies in other departments that you oversee, I'll bet you could find errors that are more egregious than this one. And if you look at my work record compared to some of my peers, you will find that the additional expense was worth it, to have someone who is competent, reliable and efficient on your staff for the price you've been paying. So the choice is yours, be punitive to send some kind of message, which will undoubtedly circulate among the others on the staff here at xxxxxxxxx and affect morale, or do the right thing by acknowledging your mistake and write it off like you would any other accounting error. I look forward to your reply."

I am not holding my breath. In fact, I am waiting for inadequate response now to give me enough cause to log off and take off, not looking back. I have had it with this situation. Couple this with the petition against the 56% rent increase that my wife and I face, I'm about at my wit's end. But I am about to go on tour, leaving a week from today. I'm hoping the hearing for the apartment doesn't take place while I'm gone, for my wife's sake. But I don't have any control over that.

I'm reading that Franken book right now. It's interesting how he pointed out Clarke before Clarke himself announced his frustrations with the Bush administration. I'm thinking Kerry can win this so long as he doesn't fuck it up.

Do you get the funny feeling that you're being watched?

Well, Frist fucked up, because Clarke called his bluff quite nicely. The smear campaign is going very, very badly. It is a beautiful thing to watch Chimp and Co. squirm.

Well, maybe the Clarke thing will have legs. I particularly like this passage in a Salon Interview with him:

Q: Why do you think Cheney -- and the Bush administration in general -- ignored the warnings that were put to them by [former national security advisor] Sandy Berger, by you, by George Tenet, who is apparently somebody they hold in great esteem?

A; They had a preconceived set of national security priorities: Star Wars, Iraq, Russia. And they were not going to change those preconceived notions based on people from the Clinton administration telling them that was the wrong set of priorities. They also looked at the statistics and saw that during eight years of the Clinton administration, al-Qaida killed fewer than 50 Americans. And that's relatively few, compared to the 300 dead during the Reagan administration at the hands of terrorists in Beirut -- and by the way, there was no military retaliation for that from Reagan. It was relatively few compared to the 259 dead on Pan Am 103 in the first Bush administration, and there was no military retaliation for that. So looking at the low number of American fatalities at the hands of al-Qaida, they might have thought that it wasn't a big threat.

They had a preconceived set of national security priorities. I would add, as Gore has already touched on since last year, that they have a preconceived set of ideological priorities across the board, whether it be domestic issues, the economy, national security, the lot. The Democratic party cannot be so neatly pigeonholed because it is a party that looks at the facts and draws conclusions, not the other way around.

I dunno about this Clarke thing. Partisans are not going to change their mind about any of this. The swing voters are where it's at. And I fear that too much emphasis on this is going to create a backlash, one where people are turned off by Kerry by associating him with the "shoulda, coulda woulda" crowd with the fine tuned hindsight vision they now have. The only way this can have an effect is as a contribution to many other stories that paint the correct impression that this administration is full of "lying, crooked" people. In that regard, Clarke has done us a great service, as Paul O'Neill, David Kay, and Rand Beers have already done before him. More will need to come, though. By November, the Clarke thing taken alone will be much ado about nothing at best. Kerry needs to get back on the stump and change the subject back to the economy, and hammer the point home that most of the "tax cuts" went to the rich, who are keeping the proceeds to themselves and are outsourcing the jobs, over, and over, and over, and over again. Kudos to Lou Dobbs for hammering the latter point.

Thought of another work related analogy today. The band I'm in is the last remaining lifeboat in my jump off this sinking ship.

I can't believe I missed this speech by Gore. It's another in his series touching on an administration that digs for dubious facts to support half baked theories, and using fear as a technique to keep people from examining the facts.