portland

Finals and New Year

The year is almost done. Currently I am trying to make a logo that I thought I had done and I am about two seconds away from just using a version of an older one I use for nearly everything else.

I know it happens in music but this was the first time I had something I thought looked really sharp, really clean, really nice, and I go away for ten minutes stretching to give myself a pat on the back for a job well done and turn around and I realize it is close enough that while people may not think it’s the same logo its close enough to something they would think its related.

Think how you got something all perfect and with some new eyes or ears it is close enough it could be seen as related to someone else’s. Very aggravating. It has been a while since I did a logo for a project of mine and there is time to do it.

School wise I am backing off of more things now that my terms are being finished, I have not found that the school may not be the best way for me to make an impact and it overall it has been something where I have been trying to see. Maybe I will look into more competitions.

Finals are currently my main focus in school and it may not be my best set of grades but it should be about a b average and right now that is fine by me.

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All In

This will be one of two posts on this subject, I will be finishing up my paperwork for the district 4 City Council position election this week and that will mean a couple things. The only other post that will talk about the election specifically or my efforts in it is going to be the reveal of my campaign page and after that this will just be my thoughts and my blog. It may deal with some topics like before but it will not talk about the campaign or my efforts on it.

Now, there are a lot of political questions. I am not going to answer them. What I will answer is something that people may ask who know me, and those who may have never heard of me be wondering.

Why do something like this?

Over the years it took me to learn how I work in the world and it is something where I can be loud but I am more of a get your work done and look towards the next goal. This is something that I will be putting myself in the spotlight to some degree due to the position involved. Honestly, it’s a big move for someone who six years ago was just getting off the street trying to make by with everything they got.

Six years have taken me from the state capitol to the nation’s capitol and from the federal court in Portland to the federal reserve and the bipartisan policy center. I have written books, and I have gotten in better shape despite still being built like Thwomp from Super Mario. We need people to listen and work on getting things done, and this week part of my work was using the time my building had lost its power to see the issues that someone disabled may have if they had to get out of a building quickly.

I banged my shins up hard doing that.

Why do something like this?

There is a way I do it, that makes me the best choice, in my very skewed opinion, and even more so I made a promise once and this may be how I intend to keep it. Also, you can tell I am nervous when I forget to schedule the posts and leave it just waiting for me to hit publish.

 [argle bargle]

If this is the worst mistake, forgetting to hit publish on a blog post during the start of a campaign then I think we can be happy with that.

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The Path We Traveled

I am going to be a little real. Sometimes doing so much it gets people wondering in day-to-day life asking about how I can do so much.

Economic competitions, leadership camps, writing books, repairing, analyzing data files and that’s just over the past two weeks. Not including the work when it comes to my classes and volunteer work. Not including projects I may not talk about as much, and while I am happy to do it, because I think it should be done and no one else is getting to it.

I sometimes give myself a rest. Call it pulling the armor off. Just relax and breath to see the lay of the land of where we had gotten.

Six years ago, I was on the streets. Before that I was using this for goofy t-shirt design and just being a loud voice on the internet that seemed to be full of them. Being goofy I will never say no to on its own. The first posts of this blog go back to 2013, and it has been an odd but entertaining cross section in my life. Definitely was learning involved in the time frame.

It was strange because I am still that angry person but back then I was the person that knew nothing but to rage because he had not been taught a thing else. Family was brutal and abusive, friends were few and unable to help, and it just felt like the world was against you, and it was true because it was. Since then, I have gotten to university, flown to the nations capital, worked with policy centers and presented to the federal reserve. I have written books, and done more than a hundred different recipes for different projects and over the time I had to learn how to be social in a way I was never used to.

Kevin Nash, who is sneaky smart had a line in a promo that I think fits.

“A funny thing happened on the way to getting here, as I got older, I got wiser.”

Anytime I can work a wrestling quote that makes sense I will. There is a difference but who I am then and who I am now have changed to some degree, I have become cagier and I have been the one to make more positive out of the negative.  I am still the angry person that wants to make things better and cannot stand stupidity without reason. Just sometimes it is important to take your helmet off and look back at the path once traveled

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Magic and Life Without It

Someone got mad once because I explained cooking as the last school of magic. For this we are going to pull the merriam webster definition.

“The use of means (such as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces.”

Now there is nothing more natural then grown food, whether animal or vegetable it is the natural force of the planet we can use to keep ourselves going.

For the sake of clarity supernatural is defined as “departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature”

Now this is a pork roulade by the freshman cook @ https://www.thefreshmancook.com/pork-roulade for those who are wondering, go check them out.

Can anyone tell me how this is a natural meal?

It is not. Nature does not come like this, we work with the materials to make our emotions, our senses, and our ideas come to life in away that is wholly without speaking but still a language all of its own. There are dishes that do something with us that scientifically we cannot explain. When your lover makes your favorite cookie after a long day of work. When your mother made you a dish after you cried from not making a sports team. The argument could be made that memory and all of that is neuroscience but even they do not understand to what degree it is or it isn’t.

Magic is something that can be holy or unholy, self-reflective or a pulse to the people around you, it can be something built out of the worst of emotions and be great, and be made from joy and be horrible for others. All it is, is a crack in the door that you do not understand the world as completely as you think. That’s it.

It took me years to believe in magic again after a lot of painful times because when you go through a lot of pain sometimes magic is the farthest thing you can believe in. It doesn’t feel like it can help you, like it can heft your weight of the mud of the situation or bandage wounds that have come from working.

Magic allows you to think you may be able, if the cards fall your way and the wind blows just right you can do things that maybe you wouldn’t be able to do as well before. Walking back to my apartment it dawned upon me that for all the people willing to shout down anyone doing well not one of them could see themselves doing the same successes they saw in others. It made me wonder why, and why they couldn’t just believe a little bit. Anywho.

Just a Thought.

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Portland data – Changes of Cost of living

Never challenge me to find numbers as a joke.

Not done yet but some of the things I have been working on

Not happy.

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Tired from DC

Welcome to the nightly ramblings.

I went to Washington DC over the weekend and I felt exhausted returning. Ten hours in a metal tube between going and returning. Now some will say how it was horrible, and if you saw it that way, I didn’t.

Now as much as I bang the drum on Portland and its ills there is something I would like to make clear. Just because I had a good time doesn’t mean there are not things to fix, there are many things to fix in any city and for those mad that newer people don’t see it is easy enough to explain. For me I came form Portland, I know what Portland looks like in good and in bad times, I have that data and those scenes already in my head. If I don’t have one or the other of good or bad I will just likely sign off it is doing fine.

The reason for that is that without knowing both you do not know if it is good or bad. Some people think Portland is great, one person explains it is nothing like Memphis. We are not in Memphis though for our conversation we are in Portland so grading needs to be the right standard.

Also, it angered me immensely that everyone was showing the Portland protests on loop. Washington DC was a place I enjoyed although I must say Portland is my home, and while it is nice to see how other cities work it is nice to go back and try to make something out of the problems that run rampant here.

Now this is more of a check in piece as trying to recover after 60 hours of stuff to do and 10 hours of flying has made me a very exhausted buffalo. I will say I walked for a couple hours and while I did have to pay for it the next day, and I didn’t go very fast it was still more then before so we can still keep moving up on that account.

More tomorrow

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Heavy Duty Volunteer

In my volunteer work, I have been keeping track for the university because you get an award if you do so many hours in a twelve-month period. Last year I got 148 hours getting me to the second highest level and 150 is the minimum to get into the highest level. The count is from May 14 to May 14 every year and so far, this year after tabbing it all up I was at around 30 hours last year

I am at 72 hours this year, and the trip is volunteer service (anything I don’t collect an hourly wage on is something that can be counted) and that is including camps and trainings as well. This includes all my meetings and generally I do not claim any reading or studying resources I could almost double that if I did.

Getting that award would be nice because as a disabled person it is something that feeds the chip on my shoulder because every so often people think disabled means you can’t do something. I try to look at it that I will need to do it a different way, and it is a different way because my goodness my legs feel like iron most days and I will say my thighs are so big I can actually crush a melon pretty easily. My size allows me to do that pretty easily, but someone who can walk miles with a frame like mine is something that usually scares some people.

Another thing is the jokes, lots of jokes with me classifying as a heavy armor unit if you give me a slingshot. I have gotten used to them and some of the better ones still make me chuckle about it.

At my size I am the volunteer version of Roadblock(seen above), although I think he looks better then I do. Cannot complain for what I have though, I am making what I can work, I just need to make sure I rest well.

So now you know and knowing is half the battle.

Stay Strong

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Scary Decisions To Make

Fear is an odd thing, it comes when you never expect it and when you do expect it it never goes the way you think. When you get close to a big goal where it is within your reach.

Life has not been the kindest to me, but there was one memory, her memory that wanted Portland to be a better place. That goal has been the reason for me to get up every day, the reason to patch myself up, to learn and go to college the way I have instead just focusing on me. Now I sit on the precipice of a decision that will win or lose change my life, and for the first time in years I was scared.

This reason to go on, this goal, could be accomplished if I win one more time. I will have the road to make this city better and I think I can do it. Then a hand feels like its squeezing your heart and panic starts to rise, and you hear your own breathing a little too well, and suddenly you feel like you don’t know if you are hunt or hunted, target or tracker.

Honestly, it feels strange. When you spend so much time with a reason being why you push yourself and suddenly you have a chance, a moment where you can step forward and try to get it, knowing if you win that you have done it, or you may lose. Finality brings the fear, a chance of maybe you aren’t that good, you can or can’t. When the reason you made it through hard times was for a mission and you can finish it something happens with who you are.

A decision here one way or another will change my life.  I may lose. I may be made a fool. I may be the lowest scoring person to ever try.

However, I have to try.

More Coming.

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Pet Peeves – Wasting Time in Politics

I do not like wasting time, it is one of those things that just drives at me because no matter what is done that time cannot be gotten back.

Seeing people from the state government try to prop Portland as some no problem paradise just pisses me off. We have crime problems, we have job problems, we have money problems and the most people want to talk about it is saying if you talk bad about Portland you are an evil MAGA.

I am a registered democrat and there are others who see this and look at the lies over the years and for those thinking Antifa is getting cleaner, they did this in 2020 with their free milkshakes and walk with families, they then poisoned a milkshake and turned it into a chemical weapon against Andy Ngo. How do I know?

I was at those protests five years ago, hell, you scour the video you will find me in a white and blue jacket. I was there and have seen the down fall and the same people who say there are no problems are now trying to show nothing is wrong when everything in their paperwork says otherwise. I have seen them try to barricade front doors since 23, the bags of rocks or the hap hazard stacks of bricks during the 2020 riots, the fireworks and items thrown at police, the hiding behind mothers who believed with them. The only thing I say what was wrong was this was something I tried to understand, I tried talking to them, and everything they said was utter trash.

Portland state had their library trashed causing more than a million dollars’ worth of damage in  a series of years where they had their budget shrink and had to make those cuts during more years of budgets shrinking. It is a lot harder to cut a shrinking budget then a growing one. We cannot as a school,(Portland state) as a city (Portland) or as a state (Oregon) be so foolish that we simply not look at out problems, and seeing that so many people want to brush them under the rug is absolutely infuriating because it means that all the good done is essentially wasted.

No program can last without funding, and no funds can be collected without people with jobs, and those jobs do not exist without businesses. Also these failed fact checks like the Oregonian is just a show of stupidity they claim no explosives have ever been used meanwhile there are videos in 2020 and 2021 of explosives being used. Hell, I saw them from a park trying to figure out why people would do this in the city.

I would have no problem if it had some point, but after five years of this, it clearly does not have one, it has been a waste of time and money for everyone in the city and the worst part is it does not even help their own case.

Gaslighting and picking the best times to show video just as a gotcha is the equivalent of someone hiding a broken plate behind their back because they know if caught it will mean they will be punished. Honestly I think we just need a better level of politician not more one way liberal or conservative, just more honest about the situation…

Maybe I need to think about doing something about it.

Stay strong.

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Meetings Next Week 10/10

One of the projects I have been working on is a civics calendar so people can get more involved, this is the current meetings for Portland next week, neighborhood associations and district coalitions in red, and city council and city advisory boards in green. It is not perfect but week to week it should tell you what everything is going to be. There will be more added so if you want to know more you can always look. I would say just on default if you are looking for your neighborhood association meeting then you will need to look with the time closer to 9 pm. A lot of them are between the 6 to 9 pm. This has been something I will keep working on when I get the time. If you are interested about civics in portland hope this helps.

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