One of the problems with working the night shift for the Company is that it's part time hours.  And with my truck's poor gas milage, the long commute, and the meager pay (not to mention soaring gas prices), I'm pissing away 20% of my pay on getting to work.

I got out tonight at 10 o'clock.  I lingered in the parking-lot watching the gibbous moon low on the horizon, bloated and bloody.  I whipped out my camera in hopes of catching its dusty red hue, but I knew it was too damn dark for my cheap digital point-and-shoot.  Sad, really, because it was just a few degrees above this refinery half a mile away — a stunning tangle of cylindrical chimneys and gantry-ways, all in sharp relief with that unwholesome jaundiced glow of powerful sodium vapor lights.

But here's a quick-from-the-hip shot of the train crossing near my place as I made my way to the HEB supermarket on S. Presa before it closed for the night.  For some reason they always play ossified hits from the '80s (just wait until a brace of ASCAP lawyers takes an asscrap on them).  This is where Kim Carnes and Bram Tchaikovsky songs come to die; here amid the displays of tripas, carnitas, and Topo Chico Tamarindo, you can always catch that brittle Euro Synth crap poorly produced by Steve Lillywhite and his coked-out imitators.  Actually, I have a nostalgic weakness for this stuff.  And the truth is, the disconnect of “Video Killed the Video Star” by the Buggles playing where 90% of the patrons are blue collar Latinos would be stronger were the folks around me not also humming along in fond recognition.  Cultura?  Hell, we all had our MTV back in the day.

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The last few days have been dreary with overcast skies and spates of unpredictable rains.  But this morning as I was loading up on coffee and cutting up a mango, I saw blue skies creeping in from the south.  I rushed to fill the washing machine on the back porch.  After catching up on a few blogs, I pulled out my laundry and hung it up on the line.  The weeds were up to my knees, and there was a scattering of bamboo shoots taller than my head.  Oh, and the mosquitos, they were overjoyed with my presence.

I made a few phone calls to confirm elements of up-coming film events.  I sent a couple of emails.  I finished the pot of coffee and my breakfast.  But really, it was the sky.  The blue sky was fighting with scraps of slow, low-flying clouds.  It was just as likely that it would rain as it wouldn't.  I headed out on a bike ride nonetheless.  The super-saturated atmosphere had the humidity at about at a hundred and thirty percent.  Nature was in some freakish imbalance.  Undoubtedly all it would take for the rain to come pissing down would be for some sad sap to feed three quarters into the slot of bay number three at the Mission Car Wash — and that vague aeolian consciousness that we all breathe in and out every day would rear back with knitted brows:  “Oh, wow, that's right.  I could precipitate.  Yeah, piddle-down on all these fuckers!”  But it was not to happen.  I stayed dry as I rolled into Padre Park.

I believe that the sign above is using the lingo of the edict.  Pity the poor critters just across the barbed-wire fence on the Charro Ranch property.  If those beasts had known of this inhospitable county-sanctioned bigotry, their nobel elongated faces would grown damp as tears rolled down.  And the vague aeolian consciousness would reel back on on his haunches and–

Oh, so cool.  Remember that bright flash the other night during the storm?  You were bitching because your on-line order to QVC was disrupted and you had to wait twenty minutes until you could get back into their labyrinthine catalogue in hopes of relocating the product order number of the jumbo tube of Estonian anchovy paste (it's what Martha S. uses for her Cesar Salad, don't'cha know).  Well, this is the result of that lightening strike.  And I'm sure there were squirrels in this tree.  Baby squirrels.  Can you fathom how adorable baby squirrels are?  I expect that there are about half a dozen of those little furry guys beneath that enormous tree limb.  So ponder that the next time you rail against Nature diminishing your precious Technology.