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Auto Biography

My Part

22 years old a bottle of whiskey by my side

EVERYTHING I JUDGE I WALK THOUGH.

With all this JB fury and indignation, these health issues swirling around my brain these past few months I seriously overlooked or ignored the way I have treated others in my very own distant past.

The way JB treated me perfectly mirrors the way I have treated others. This is life’s great symmetry!

My indignation has blinded me to my part in all of this.  You know, I am perfectly sure that there are men and women out there who are delighted that I have, at last, been taught a lesson in love.

To you all, to past loves, to those who tried..today I want to make my amends.

To AH who I cheated on.  To JBC who I used.  To CS the NYC photographer who I took advantage of.   TK in Amsterdam I have tried to find you to make my amends.  These people tried so hard to do good for me, reached out selflessly as I did for JB.   And,  just as I was fucked over by JB, I fucked them over each and every one.  Without care or consideration.

Four people who I can remember right now who could and should be outraged by my behaviour.

In each instance I paid the price that needed paying either with my heart or my wallet.  That they still haunt me is testament to my guilt…to something unresolved.

I will add more as and when I can remember them.  If there are any?

To be treated as I have treated others is of course all part of GOD’S BIG PLAN.

There is no excuse for bad behaviour.   Not when you are a grown up.

You may be wondering why JP is not on this list, well..we pretty equally destroyed each other and I long ago owned my part in that sordid affair.

There are many apologies that I need to make in many different ways.  Eventually I will get around to all of you..eventually.  Remembering, forcing myself to remember the way I have treated others has softened my heart even more toward JB.   We all make mistakes, we can all use and abuse.  We can all take advantage.

If I am going one day to die at peace, a smile on my face then I must make these amends.   It is essential.

This was the very last piece of the jigsaw puzzle that needed finding and with great relief it is now in place.  The picture is complete.  My part, my mistakes owned up to.

Of course I still want JB to pay me as I have paid others what was owed.   It is the right thing to do and he must learn the right thing as I have been taught by taking the wrong turn over and over.

Yesterday I went to therapy.  I talked about my anger.  After I did I felt so much better.  JA and I had lunch at SHLA.   After lunch I came home and messed about with the spa.   Sarah and Paul came for dinner and we watched Nina Hagen sing My Own Personal Jesus that Paul produced.  Remember this summer when she was here?  Her daughter is so beautiful..as is her mother.

The sun is shining and I am in a great mood.

Rambla Pacifico, the direct road to the sea has hit a snag and I have no idea if it will ever be finished.  The work continues but there is an easement problem that needs fixing.  Oh dear.

JB, can we just end this absurd fight?  Can you just send what is owed and leave me alone?  Please?  I have this picture of you.  Wearing my hat…now lost.  It is how I want to remember you.  My friend and lover.  Like a mouse set free in the garden.  You HAVE to do the right thing or this will never go away.  I am desperate to remember you fondly and though I can never, ever see you again I want for us to be at peace.  Is this possible?

Jake Bauman

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Money Rant

Seventeen Thousand Dollars

Oh what a tangled web we weave.   Loads on my mind today: Taxes, Tiger Woods, and Mr. Darling NYC.

The dogs are sitting on the bed looking expectantly but God only knows when we will walk again judging by the gloomy weather reports.

I seemed to have stirred up yet another hornets nest.

I want to make something clear to my hornets.  Like many of you I pay thousands of dollars in tax: federal, state and local taxes.  I pay sales tax, road tax and property tax.  In fact of all the taxes I pay the one that galls me most is my property tax, which at  $17,000 a year is unforgivably huge.

SEVENTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR.

An equivalent property tax in the UK for a similarly priced home would be $3,000 at most.

I pay all of my many and various taxes begrudgingly because if I don’t the state will take my home.  Why begrudgingly you may ask?  Well, a good proportion of my tax funds bogus wars I do not agree with and bank bailouts that counter my free market sympathies.   Wars and bailouts that just make a few people very, very rich and kill many, many innocent people.

My tax dollars help kill thousands of innocent people.

As one reader points out, I can’t vote so I am not able to have a say in the way my taxes are spent.  I am not allowed to get involved with politics here in the USA so I have no legitimate soapbox from which to stand and complain.   I only have this blog.

Rather than cast me as unpatriotic, ungrateful or as an America basher why can’t you understand that I, as a taxpayer have every right not to agree with the status quo.  The attitude some of my readers have that we have no option, that we are powerless in the face of government, that an opposing view is un-American, that the IRS has a right to rip us off so we may as well get used to it..is simply astounding.

My desire for all of us and our children is that we get what the rest of the developed world takes for granted:  that for just about the same amount of tax we pay or less in the case of the British the PEOPLE get so much more.  Let me tell you again:  three free years of education, public transportation, well maintained highways, healthcare, public arts, BBC etc. etc.

It is sickening that the majority of our tax dollars are simply drained away from the public to fight expensive wars, imprison people in private prisons, subsidize the pharmaceutical industry..the list is endless!    As a taxpayer I am outraged that so little of our hard earned cash works for the common good, for the investment in people so that we might halt this rapid decline and encourage invention, entrepreneurialism, and industry.

The price for a total lack of investment in the American people will be catastrophic.

Is it even logical to saddle the young with huge student loans and expensive health insurance whilst you fight costly wars or fund bank bailouts?  Can’t you see that education and healthcare are basic human rights and serve any prosperous nation? An educated and healthy workforce will serve a country so much better than those who live in fear of economic insecurity or health related bankruptcy.

I maintain my assertion that yesterdays mad Joe into the IRS stunt was a metaphor and should be understood as such.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear to all of you.  I believed in this country so much I moved all of my personal wealth from Britain only to see it vanish because of appalling fiscal mismanagement and endemic government mandated greed.  Greed that has not only destroyed our shared dream, the American Dream that many of us still believe in but the dreams of the next generation.

Of course I don’t want to fly an airplane into an IRS building but can understand the murderous frustration of someone who does.