~ Time flies when Chicago is not the town.

The news is that Chicago is a musical, not an Olympic city.  It figures.  Even Eisenhower could not bring the Olympics to Kansas, Truman couldn’t bring them to Missouri, LBJ couldn’t bring the games to Dallas or even Fort Worth or Houston.  San Antonio would have been a good choice, but then again the Alamo might have caused too much intrigue.  An Olympic city must be big.  Maybe the Teheran Olympics would be a good exchange for nuclear power.  But with Obama behind the “Teheran Olympics” there are certain to be other, even better options in the political world of paydirt.

The point is that America, and the American president, does not carry much weight anymore.  My guess is that word is leeking out (or leaking out) about the deficit, the debt, the fact that America cannot and will not pay its bills.  I buy aluminum foil in big thick rolls at home depot.  I try to buy it, that is.  The fact is that Home Depot is short on aluminum; no futures or future it seems.  All the metal worth watching is heavy metal it seems and Home Depot doesn’t sell heavy metals; the company is in enough trouble trying to sell the light weight stuff.  Anyway, that is why I sought out a manager to manage my question about aluminum foil and tin foil hats and maybe it is only the vinyl sinkers that will kill you which is why I think that screws are better and that deck screws are the best; but hey, I’m over sixty now and I might have learned a thing or two in life.

The manager had a lot to say.  He offered to drive all over Albuquerque to find me aluminum so that I could buy it.  I was ready to buy six packs of coke so I could smash the cans flat and use them on my roof.  Things were not that desperate he assured me.  There really were at least twenty rolls of aluminum in all of New Mexico at Home Depots disposal, Lowes maybe had eleven more.  Thirty rolls of aluminum is a lot for any state given the recession and all.  Business is pretty slow and all.  It takes a lot of electricity to make aluminum.  You can’t afford to just have the metal hanging around, unused, waiting for buyers in stores that don’t have buyers that want to buy aluminum or other metals or maybe lumber even.

Anyway, the manager said the Home Depot is in for big changes soon.  It makes sense.  The company grew on the back of an economy that no longer exists.  Mail-order wood might be the answer.  Pay in advance for a two by four or two, have UPS deliver each bag of cement, join “paint of the month” club and you are sure to have the colors on hand that you might need come February.  His point (and mine) is that retail could look a lot different in the future; in the very near future.

Lumber stores used to be pretty much local.  Hardware stores always were.  You could buy chain without going to one.  Then “big box”  came  to town.  Prices were cheaper because the selection was less; odd size bolts were out; informed advice was out; the shopper was on her (and his) own and big carts could do all the work because one could no longer drive their pick-up truck to the pile of lumber in the rear.  Life changes.  Loading docks went the way of Palomino horses pulling dray wagons.  So let it be with Caesar and with Home Depot if it needs be - the truth will be interred with the bones.  Do I digress?

Should I be looking to the President for help with my new roof?  I don’t think he would understand it.  He is more used to roofs made of oil, like over the White House; big oil roofs, big Texas “T”, asphalt and tar and put up the whole La Brea tar pits up there if the house will just stay dry and the leeks (leaks) will stop and the rains will stay on the plains (in Spain) where they are supposed to.  The drip-drip-drip of the Chinese water torture is an evolutionary acquirement; it is rooted in the madness of a leaking (leeking) roof which should not be farmland and if it is farmland should not take the concept of drip irrigation way too far.  But, I was talking down the oil industry and trashing the concept of tar and feather roofs (assuming that birds land on them or even live in your neighborhood).

Maybe some day I will post about “virtual beach” and my back yard and why I ended up with a lot of sand that was good to have to mix cement and make concrete which is what I use to make my deck and make my roof which is flat, but waterproof; because concrete is better than dead dinosaurs (tar and oil and gasoline) anytime.  Which is not to say all my roof is flat (just the flat part - the deck part).  Most of my roof is tilted, which is like a slope, which is like good for water to run-off, which brings up the issue of water rights and water harvesting and maybe what the White House is doing to conserve water because the Southwest getting more water is more important than the Olympics going to Chicago; I just know that you saw that one coming.

If you grew up politically near one of the largest lakes in the world it is unlikely that you worry much about water.  In Chicago they still think that “wet and dry states” is about prohibition and rum running and bootlegging and alcohol.  In New Mexico we got news.  Much of Afghanistan too is dry; which is why (I guess) that Obama doesn’t understand Afghanistan and every time someone says “dry” he thinks it is about the fact that the Taliban doesn’t drink alcohol and then the conversation just goes nowhere as the Army Command drifts off to the Officers Club (to get a drink) and now you know why we’ll (meaning the USA) will never win this war and why the White House roof will never leak until there is no more oil in Texas (which may be far too soon).

Anyway, this whole post is a little like a metaphor; but is more like reality, a lesson, a how to treatise on how to make a better roof (details perhaps tomorrow).  The point is my roof is working and the President maybe not.  My roof is keeping the rains at bay; his roof is leaking badly.  In my corner of the desert life is good, we’ll harvest the rain maybe, all good things take time.  Rio means river; and all rivers originate in rain.  Somehow the President should have known that.

[2009.10.02 / Friday - Two weeks and a Cement Roof]