I often wished I could have had a respectable life. Scott, heir to a foundry, solid citizen. Last time I saw him, he was mowing his lawn, smoking a cigar, grumpy as heck. Something similar happened to Glen, sad and truculent. Cheery Joette died young. Eileen became an academic feminist, a functionary of government. Tootie played well with others, smiled a lot. Tommy was a naval officer. Steve followed in his father's footsteps, a bank officer. He was stuffy and unhelpful when I helped my mother present a check to pay off her mortgage. Probably got fired when his small town bank was acquired by a regional brand. Up or out, right, Steve?
Charlie became a librarian or something at an ashram, after a long career as a drunk. My pal Tom worked at the same part-time job 30 years with occasional forays in video, much of it access comedy, old jokes told twice. Jay faked reality and used Ronco Spray-On Hair. I didn't think he was particularly talented or clever, but he lived his entire life in show business and did a great job as art director on a show that Tom produced and I directed in 1982.
Okay, suppose I had been born in another time, like my father. He drove a halftrack in WWII, went to college and met my mother. Five sons used him up, kept him indentured to a job and a small town that he hated, beaten into accepting Food Stamps, devastating humiliation. He always wanted to work construction, move to Arizona, got to do neither, died where he was born. Ditto Uncle Fred, a bachelor shunned and shamed by pilfering a client's cash, did tax returns for helpless idiots, died in the house that he and Aunt Mary inherited, never left the nest. My brothers fared okay, I guess. Roger did exceptionally well, but he was hobbled by caring for my parents in their long horror of illness and incompetence. I escaped and never went back, except to visit and escape again as quickly as possible. There was nothing for me in Milwaukee or the crushingly airless German village that destroyed my parents.
Lemme think, who do I admire? Anne Coulter for sure, Ivy League law school, happy as a clam and perfectly confident no matter how awful the opposition. She laughs at them. Margaret Thatcher was wonderful in the same way, tough, happy, skewered blockheads gaily and took down the Soviet Union in partnership with Reagan. I did not want to be Ronald Reagan, nor did I admire Donald Trump. George W. Bush was a stone idiot, his father equally shallow and conventional. Jeb is the smart one? Hahahaha.
Oh, come on, surely there must be someone who you'd rather be?
Blank stare. Hammett and Chandler had horrible lives, Fitzgerald infinitely worse. Patton was a monster, although George C. Scott was splendid. It's certain that Jimmy Stewart was loved, but I'm not sure how good an actor he was. Acting was unnatural to me, directing automatic. That was the only definite talent I exhibited as a kid -- ringleader, organizer, leader. A client in Philadelphia asked: "How long have you been an idea man?" The question stunned me, made me think, and the only thing I could say in reply was: "All my life."
That's good news and awful news. In a recent email, my brother Roger opined that I was a "visionary," which was a respectable office on occasion (Edison, Voltaire, Grotius) but more often a trainwreck: Marx, Jesus, Mohammed, Kant, Owen, Wilson, FDR, Mao. I like to think that I advanced better ideas, but the price was awfully fucking steep, an entire lifetime and big misadventures to discern a simple idea or two. I never regarded myself as particularly talented, aside from directing and editing, storytelling, pitching ideas.
Denied a career in show business and exiled as an author, I should have done something else in life, but what? Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. Machinist, artist, janitor. But the truth is inescapable, I was always a terrible employee. Personal best was a year at Disney, pushing paper and pushing the envelope, unwanted. I was under a lot of pressure. Tab had adapted Hunchback of Notre Dame, a one-sheet poster opposite my cubicle, saw it ten times a day. Tab got a nice WGA payday and I got $15 an hour to master Miramax bullshit. We started out as apartment neighbors in a cheap North Hollywood lanai. Cut it out, quit bitching. You don't want Tab's karma, nor Tarantino's or Spielberg's, that's for damn sure.
Okay, more truthiness, I was horrible at math. I remember the classrooms quite clearly, 14 years old, totally lost in geometry and pre-algebra. No science for you, dumbshit. The specific alternate universe I hoped for as a kid was radio communications. I couldn't memorize Morse Code to get a ham licence, a cognitive deficit, every second a new blank slate. No wonder I needed help as a filmmaker, couldn't shoot my own stuff, had to be prompted by a script girl on the set, made silly mistakes and missed common sense visual opportunities, emotionally overwhelmed by a performance, a stunt, a dolly move, a moment of life in high relief.
Sex mad, moment by moment seduction in high key. All I can do is shake my head, partly in plain disbelief. Gone now, of course. Too old and feeble to fuck. So I started putting porn on the page, outrageously graphic. No wonder I write so slowly. Stories unfold in slow motion, unplanned, extemporaneous. Plain language. A deep seated fear of repeating myself, using the same word or same idea twice, an impossible mission. Unread, utterly isolated.
Poop. Happy to be me, with one simple misery, grinding poverty, unable to feed myself. The draw of an alternate universe is money, applause, recognition as an idea man. Too late now. My ideas were unwelcome. Is that the fate of all visionaries? Terrible result.
Or is it? Consider Kavanaugh. Silver spoon, only child, first in his class, athlete, Yale, secret White House clearance, Harvard law professor, DC circuit court judge, never thought a radical idea in his life, squeaky clean follower of fascism, suddenly ruined by Deep State black ops, another turn of the torture screws every day and every sleepless night. He will die a broken man, everything wrongly taken from him, a straight-laced Boy Scout eaten by the lions.
Compared to Kavanaugh, being me sounds pretty good.
.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Friday, September 28, 2018
Intensely proud
I opened Finding Flopsie tonight, skipped past the soap opera set-up and went straight to Chris on his own, losing his teaching job, his office, his p.i. license, and his pride, all in one afternoon. Absolutely terrific -- and then the story takes off on urgent business, active and grim, Chris Cable at his best, age 64. Whether I got Peachy's story right is debatable, but it simply had to be that way, role reversal with her evil sister, a tortured animal.
Not much to say about Partners, my masterwork.
I cleaned up Mars Shall Thunder for the anthology Eight Ruthless Novels, happy with it and proud of it, my first full-length novel. The Good Walk Alone was a rolicking comedy, free as a lark, fun to write, drove me crazy writing a serial to weekly deadline. DiMarco remains my favorite character of all, a tough female homicide cop, age 38. I don't know quite what to say about First Feature. Personal stories are holy, if anything pertaining to show business is.
The Case Files trilogy (Valor, Tar Pit, and Charity) are what they had to be, a modern Nick and Nora Charles, to honor Dashiell Hammett's final novel The Thin Man, a burlesque that broke the noir genre, gave us penthouse cocktail parties and sexy women as a backdrop to murder. Chris and Peachy are a little different, equals in life, an unbeatable team. A Portrait of Valor tests them to the limit of human daring and spiritual endurance at the peak of their vitality, 30-something, deeply in love for the first time, perfectly matched in marriage. In many ways Valor is my favorite story. Boy meets girl and they go to heaven and hell to earn each other. Being childless opens the door to an important truth, the wider moral horizons of Charity. In our calm, clever 50s, new life happens if we embrace it.
I suppose it's true that all of my stories are aspects of my personal life, things that happened to me, one way or another, amplified a notch or two. I wrote about people and places I knew well enough to speak confidently. I had a life full of adventure. A little sad that it's over, but that's part of life, too. No one likes to talk about the end, and it would be wrong to paint the final chapter of any fictional character's slow demise. Bad enough that I have to do it.
Nice to leave a literary legacy, the splendor of young adulthood and active middle age, great eagerness to thrive, a whole world to gamble and win -- or to lose, in the tragedy of Partners, a story that I did not expect to create. Partners was costly, in time and talent and weight of burden, everything I had to give and endure, the capstone of my career. I know it for a fact, I worked 20 years to prepare myself to write Partners. Completely unexpected and worth it.
Truthfully, I don't recommend that anyone else pursue a creative career. The field is occupied by hostile assholes and pusillanimous slime. Indie self-publishing is a fake solution, gateway to obscurity, sandbagged by Amazon and Google if you stand up for straight white wildcats. I cared about my characters and their circumstances, emptied my wallet to let them breathe and stand fully erect, a proud race of titans. "Old fashioned," Cass declared. So be it. We owe our industrial preeminence and military power to such people, men and women who face a world of tawdry evasion, ritual, and inertia, and kick it into the gutter, where it belongs.
A pity that I wasn't born rich, but if I had been there would be no Chris and Peachy, no Janet DiMarco, no Harry Faraday and Laura Oak, no Kyle and Karen, no Freeman's Constitution to honor and defend them. Pretty good bargain. Those who fight for the future live in it today, Ayn Rand said. True, false, or purple, I'm satisfied that I did everything I could to advance the idea of defacto liberty. Whether sterling hero or hardened criminal, nothing displaces human potential, personal choice, stern perception of values, to live free or to die a coward's quiet, anonymous, meaningless end on earth. The gift of life is not to be thrown away cheaply.
.
Not much to say about Partners, my masterwork.
I cleaned up Mars Shall Thunder for the anthology Eight Ruthless Novels, happy with it and proud of it, my first full-length novel. The Good Walk Alone was a rolicking comedy, free as a lark, fun to write, drove me crazy writing a serial to weekly deadline. DiMarco remains my favorite character of all, a tough female homicide cop, age 38. I don't know quite what to say about First Feature. Personal stories are holy, if anything pertaining to show business is.
The Case Files trilogy (Valor, Tar Pit, and Charity) are what they had to be, a modern Nick and Nora Charles, to honor Dashiell Hammett's final novel The Thin Man, a burlesque that broke the noir genre, gave us penthouse cocktail parties and sexy women as a backdrop to murder. Chris and Peachy are a little different, equals in life, an unbeatable team. A Portrait of Valor tests them to the limit of human daring and spiritual endurance at the peak of their vitality, 30-something, deeply in love for the first time, perfectly matched in marriage. In many ways Valor is my favorite story. Boy meets girl and they go to heaven and hell to earn each other. Being childless opens the door to an important truth, the wider moral horizons of Charity. In our calm, clever 50s, new life happens if we embrace it.
I suppose it's true that all of my stories are aspects of my personal life, things that happened to me, one way or another, amplified a notch or two. I wrote about people and places I knew well enough to speak confidently. I had a life full of adventure. A little sad that it's over, but that's part of life, too. No one likes to talk about the end, and it would be wrong to paint the final chapter of any fictional character's slow demise. Bad enough that I have to do it.
Nice to leave a literary legacy, the splendor of young adulthood and active middle age, great eagerness to thrive, a whole world to gamble and win -- or to lose, in the tragedy of Partners, a story that I did not expect to create. Partners was costly, in time and talent and weight of burden, everything I had to give and endure, the capstone of my career. I know it for a fact, I worked 20 years to prepare myself to write Partners. Completely unexpected and worth it.
Truthfully, I don't recommend that anyone else pursue a creative career. The field is occupied by hostile assholes and pusillanimous slime. Indie self-publishing is a fake solution, gateway to obscurity, sandbagged by Amazon and Google if you stand up for straight white wildcats. I cared about my characters and their circumstances, emptied my wallet to let them breathe and stand fully erect, a proud race of titans. "Old fashioned," Cass declared. So be it. We owe our industrial preeminence and military power to such people, men and women who face a world of tawdry evasion, ritual, and inertia, and kick it into the gutter, where it belongs.
A pity that I wasn't born rich, but if I had been there would be no Chris and Peachy, no Janet DiMarco, no Harry Faraday and Laura Oak, no Kyle and Karen, no Freeman's Constitution to honor and defend them. Pretty good bargain. Those who fight for the future live in it today, Ayn Rand said. True, false, or purple, I'm satisfied that I did everything I could to advance the idea of defacto liberty. Whether sterling hero or hardened criminal, nothing displaces human potential, personal choice, stern perception of values, to live free or to die a coward's quiet, anonymous, meaningless end on earth. The gift of life is not to be thrown away cheaply.
.
It was a Deep State operation
San Francisco-based talker Michael Savage broadcast an important story last night. Dr. Ford taught psychological warfare at Stanford. Her brother organized Fusion GPS. The attack on Kavanaugh was scripted. Do not underestimate Obama-led CIA spooks and FBI agents. They will stop at nothing and have unlimited funds, indoctrinated and trained to lie under oath.
Security of the White House and Republican leadership depends entirely on Secret Service, Capitol Police, and a small Marine detail. Damn well better be on a war footing, prepared to deal with chemical, biological, or nerve agent attack. No wonder Paul Ryan is retiring.
A Mueller leak of rumors and lies before Nov. 6 is dead certain, a classic "October surprise" like the phony Trump dossier leaked to the press in October 2016. Equally certain are Antifa / Me Too / Black Lives Matter marches and riots, with an avalanche of sex abuse accusations hurled at Republican candidates, physical attacks in restaurants and campaign events. In the event that Dems win a majority in the House, v.p. Mike Pence will be targeted next.
.
Security of the White House and Republican leadership depends entirely on Secret Service, Capitol Police, and a small Marine detail. Damn well better be on a war footing, prepared to deal with chemical, biological, or nerve agent attack. No wonder Paul Ryan is retiring.
A Mueller leak of rumors and lies before Nov. 6 is dead certain, a classic "October surprise" like the phony Trump dossier leaked to the press in October 2016. Equally certain are Antifa / Me Too / Black Lives Matter marches and riots, with an avalanche of sex abuse accusations hurled at Republican candidates, physical attacks in restaurants and campaign events. In the event that Dems win a majority in the House, v.p. Mike Pence will be targeted next.
.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Okay, smart guy, now what?
 |
| Totally brainless. |
Apparently, I'm not going to die tomorrow or on a predictable schedule. This is both good news and awful news. I'll have to do something about that, write something. Please, no more novels, way too much work, months of frigid winter looming on the horizon. It would be nice to write something that made money. I had a gig last month, notes and ideas. Unlikely that the same lightning would hit my wallet twice. Tom chipped in money ostensibly for services rendered a year ago. I consider it a gift, little chance of paying him back. Uncertain if there's any carpentry work to be had, or whether I'm strong enough to do that again. Rats.
As interesting as the puzzle of poverty may be, that's not the big problem. I need an idea. I already discarded (again) the stupid cozy mystery The Dead Things Place that I started in 1987 and tossed in the trash. I can do a lot of things, but I can't write anything simple, a whodunnit in a redwood forest, a Park Service ranger who has to figure out how a body got dumped. Gah.
Okay, smart guy, where to?
Not outer space. Been there, done that. I toyed with the idea of shooting video at the Pioneer Gathering event next week, a couple hundred people, black powder rifles, hatchet throwing, handiwork, coal-fired donkey engines, bluegrass music. It's something that anyone could do, shooting fish in a barrel with a little HD camera. Nope. Any doofus can make a documentary. Video schmideo.
A nonfiction essay about Trump and the Democrats. Pt-t-t-th. I used to be fairly creative, for fuck's sake. The last thing I need to do is follow headlines, get lost in a shitstorm of bloggers and 180-character twats. Same problem with work for hire at Upwork. Last time I wrote an article there, the client screwed me. Projects offered that I wouldn't touch with a dirty fork. Sometimes I think the world has gone bonkers. But that doesn't solve my problem. I need a creative chore that makes sense, something only I can do.
Hmph. That would be a story (taps fingers on keys). Maybe a short story.
Who? Where? When? What? Why?
(insert idea here)
.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Kosmic joke
Exxon's $4 billion Kosmos offer rejected
(This was my debut Alrroya newspaper column published in 2010. That I subsequently wrote and produced an oil industry luncheon video introducing George W. Bush as a "great American leader" goes to show how easily and cheaply a writer can be bought. It took a long time to find photos of W. where he didn't look like a stupid deer caught in the headlights.)
In October 2009, I noted ExxonMobil's offer to buy the privately-held Kosmos Energy 24% interest in Ghana's Jubilee oil field. Based on Tullow maps and well data, I deduced that Exxon was using a medium term $100 per barrel price model to determine how much to bid for the Kosmos stake. No surprise, it matched oil forecasts by T. Boone Pickens, Goldman Sachs, and former CIBC World Markets chief economist Jeff Rubin.
Kosmos promptly accepted the Exxon bid, in a straightforward move to monetize their Jubilee asset. They were out of pocket less than $1 billion funded by Warburg Pincus and Blackstone Capital Partners. Exxon's $4 billion offer would give them a $3 billion profit and zero their risk of development and doing business in Ghana. Kosmos previously reduced their risk by farming out stakes to Anadarko and Tullow, who did the actual work of drilling and discovery. Clever little Dallas-based Kosmos had achieved what all E&P "minnows" hope to do -- get a license, bring in experienced operators, then flip it to a fat supermajor.
Except the wheels fell off and Exxon's offer died.
Who, why, and what killed the acquisition is a convoluted story. It starts at a racetrack in Dallas involving Texas politicians, a Federal class-action settlement, and a Monte Carlo head fake that propelled attorney James C. Musselman from obscurity to VIP status at a White House state dinner for Ghana's President John Agyekum Kufour.
Musselman got his start in the oil business as an investor in Triton Energy. He became its CEO in 1998 when Tom Hicks, owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team and chairman of private-equity firm Hicks Muse Tate & Furst, bought a big speculative stake in troubled Triton.
Musselman's job was to pump up reserves and sell the company, which he successfully did in 2001, after reporting an operating loss of $383 million. Hess paid a 50% premium to Triton shareholders to acquire the Ceiba oil field in Equatorial Guinea. Musselman and his team were deemed geniuses, and they briefly worked for Hess, until Hess had to declare a $530 million impairment charge and write down 70% of the Triton reserves they paid $3 billion to own.
But that's not how it played in Ghana, nor in Dallas where Musselman and his ex-Triton team founded a new company, Kosmos Energy, in 2003. They were touted as West Africa experts with a new project negotiated by Craig S. Glick, who left Hunt Oil with inside knowledge of the West Cape Three Points block in Ghana. Hunt acquired 2D seismic data totalling 2,225 km and 264 square kilometres of 3D. They drilled and logged two deepwater wells. Those wells were immediately east of the future Jubilee discovery. When Hunt Oil quit Ghana in 2001, the story gets a little bizarre, clogged in multiple layers of state secrets.
Before he became President of the United States, Gov. George W. Bush was co-owner of the Texas Rangers, which he sold to Hicks. After he left the White House, Bush bought a house in the exclusive Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas, down the street from Musselman's $6 million mansion. It seems likely that they knew each other in 2003, when Bush met Ghanaian President John Agyekum Kufour in Dakar and urged him to do business with US backing.
Two of Kufour's trusted associates laid the groundwork for a deal with Kosmos. Dr. Kwame Barwuah Edusei, a medical doctor practicing in Washington DC, and George Owusu, a self-styled Ghanaian oil broker living in Houston, formed a company called E-O, rather hilariously registered at a chicken farm near Accra. Kosmos and E-O entered into a written agreement signed by Edusei for E-O and Glick for Kosmos, covering future exploration, production and other revenue: Kosmos 86.5%, Ghana National Petroleum Company 10%, E-O 3.5%. The agreement stated that Kosmos would carry E-O and additionally pay them $250,000 upfront. Kufour appointed Edusei ambassador to Switzerland in August 2004 (to open a numbered account?) and later appointed him Ghana’s ambassador to the White House. Owusu became Kosmos Energy's Ghana representative. Owusu's Kosmos salary, perks and other graft may have totalled $2 million before he ran afoul of anti-corruption due diligence by Anadarko.
President Kufour, after serving two four-year terms, had to step down in 2009. He and his cronies did everything possible to grease the wheels for Kosmos, Anadarko, and Tullow -- signing off on low royalties, 100% off-loading for export, and token involvement of GNPC. President George Bush and First Lady Laura Bush made a 3-day goodwill visit to Ghana in February 2008, meeting all 30 tribal chiefs, promising US development aid, and stumping for Kufour's New Patriotic Party, hoping to upstage and deflate perennial opposition presidential candidate John Atta Mills. In September 2008 there was a gala White House state dinner to honor President Kufour and Kosmos boss Jim Musselman. In Ghana, NPP newspapers and radio stations celebrated their fabulous new oil wealth, thanks to Kufour and Kosmos.
All for nought. Social democrat and former national tax commissioner John Atta Mills was elected president of Ghana by a razor-thin majority, after an odd ballot re-run in a remote rural constituency. His first act in office was to appoint a special advisor on energy policy, Tsatsu Tsikata, long-serving patriarch of GNPC who was put in prison and tried for "causing financial loss to the state" when Kufour came to power in 2000. His trial lasted eight years and Tsikata was pronounced guilty, then pardoned when Mills won the 2009 presidential runoff.
Tsikata flew to Houston and visited Anadarko to pick up their Corrupt Foreign Practices file on E-O and Kosmos Ghana. Then he flew to New York and retained Morgan Stanley as financial advisors. Next on the agenda was a $10 billion line of credit from China. George Owusu's and E-O's assets were seized. Kosmos was put under investigation. In 2010, Tsikata flew to China six times, negotiating with CNOOC.
When Kosmos filed a request to sell its interest in Jubilee to Exxon, the government's reaction was slow and comical. In due course, the Energy Ministry said, they would vet ExxonMobil and consider their suitability to partner a Ghanaian oil company. We intend to produce Jubilee gas first, before oil production, because our country needs more electric generation, and we will be working with world class government engineering experts from Trinidad and Tobago. Your $4 billion Exxon deal is imaginary and illegal.
The only buyer Kosmos Energy could talk to was Tsatsu Tsikata.
<end of text>
<research notes appended>
(This was my debut Alrroya newspaper column published in 2010. That I subsequently wrote and produced an oil industry luncheon video introducing George W. Bush as a "great American leader" goes to show how easily and cheaply a writer can be bought. It took a long time to find photos of W. where he didn't look like a stupid deer caught in the headlights.)
In October 2009, I noted ExxonMobil's offer to buy the privately-held Kosmos Energy 24% interest in Ghana's Jubilee oil field. Based on Tullow maps and well data, I deduced that Exxon was using a medium term $100 per barrel price model to determine how much to bid for the Kosmos stake. No surprise, it matched oil forecasts by T. Boone Pickens, Goldman Sachs, and former CIBC World Markets chief economist Jeff Rubin.
Kosmos promptly accepted the Exxon bid, in a straightforward move to monetize their Jubilee asset. They were out of pocket less than $1 billion funded by Warburg Pincus and Blackstone Capital Partners. Exxon's $4 billion offer would give them a $3 billion profit and zero their risk of development and doing business in Ghana. Kosmos previously reduced their risk by farming out stakes to Anadarko and Tullow, who did the actual work of drilling and discovery. Clever little Dallas-based Kosmos had achieved what all E&P "minnows" hope to do -- get a license, bring in experienced operators, then flip it to a fat supermajor.
Except the wheels fell off and Exxon's offer died.
Who, why, and what killed the acquisition is a convoluted story. It starts at a racetrack in Dallas involving Texas politicians, a Federal class-action settlement, and a Monte Carlo head fake that propelled attorney James C. Musselman from obscurity to VIP status at a White House state dinner for Ghana's President John Agyekum Kufour.
Musselman got his start in the oil business as an investor in Triton Energy. He became its CEO in 1998 when Tom Hicks, owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team and chairman of private-equity firm Hicks Muse Tate & Furst, bought a big speculative stake in troubled Triton.
Musselman's job was to pump up reserves and sell the company, which he successfully did in 2001, after reporting an operating loss of $383 million. Hess paid a 50% premium to Triton shareholders to acquire the Ceiba oil field in Equatorial Guinea. Musselman and his team were deemed geniuses, and they briefly worked for Hess, until Hess had to declare a $530 million impairment charge and write down 70% of the Triton reserves they paid $3 billion to own.
But that's not how it played in Ghana, nor in Dallas where Musselman and his ex-Triton team founded a new company, Kosmos Energy, in 2003. They were touted as West Africa experts with a new project negotiated by Craig S. Glick, who left Hunt Oil with inside knowledge of the West Cape Three Points block in Ghana. Hunt acquired 2D seismic data totalling 2,225 km and 264 square kilometres of 3D. They drilled and logged two deepwater wells. Those wells were immediately east of the future Jubilee discovery. When Hunt Oil quit Ghana in 2001, the story gets a little bizarre, clogged in multiple layers of state secrets.
Before he became President of the United States, Gov. George W. Bush was co-owner of the Texas Rangers, which he sold to Hicks. After he left the White House, Bush bought a house in the exclusive Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas, down the street from Musselman's $6 million mansion. It seems likely that they knew each other in 2003, when Bush met Ghanaian President John Agyekum Kufour in Dakar and urged him to do business with US backing.
Two of Kufour's trusted associates laid the groundwork for a deal with Kosmos. Dr. Kwame Barwuah Edusei, a medical doctor practicing in Washington DC, and George Owusu, a self-styled Ghanaian oil broker living in Houston, formed a company called E-O, rather hilariously registered at a chicken farm near Accra. Kosmos and E-O entered into a written agreement signed by Edusei for E-O and Glick for Kosmos, covering future exploration, production and other revenue: Kosmos 86.5%, Ghana National Petroleum Company 10%, E-O 3.5%. The agreement stated that Kosmos would carry E-O and additionally pay them $250,000 upfront. Kufour appointed Edusei ambassador to Switzerland in August 2004 (to open a numbered account?) and later appointed him Ghana’s ambassador to the White House. Owusu became Kosmos Energy's Ghana representative. Owusu's Kosmos salary, perks and other graft may have totalled $2 million before he ran afoul of anti-corruption due diligence by Anadarko.
President Kufour, after serving two four-year terms, had to step down in 2009. He and his cronies did everything possible to grease the wheels for Kosmos, Anadarko, and Tullow -- signing off on low royalties, 100% off-loading for export, and token involvement of GNPC. President George Bush and First Lady Laura Bush made a 3-day goodwill visit to Ghana in February 2008, meeting all 30 tribal chiefs, promising US development aid, and stumping for Kufour's New Patriotic Party, hoping to upstage and deflate perennial opposition presidential candidate John Atta Mills. In September 2008 there was a gala White House state dinner to honor President Kufour and Kosmos boss Jim Musselman. In Ghana, NPP newspapers and radio stations celebrated their fabulous new oil wealth, thanks to Kufour and Kosmos.
All for nought. Social democrat and former national tax commissioner John Atta Mills was elected president of Ghana by a razor-thin majority, after an odd ballot re-run in a remote rural constituency. His first act in office was to appoint a special advisor on energy policy, Tsatsu Tsikata, long-serving patriarch of GNPC who was put in prison and tried for "causing financial loss to the state" when Kufour came to power in 2000. His trial lasted eight years and Tsikata was pronounced guilty, then pardoned when Mills won the 2009 presidential runoff.
Tsikata flew to Houston and visited Anadarko to pick up their Corrupt Foreign Practices file on E-O and Kosmos Ghana. Then he flew to New York and retained Morgan Stanley as financial advisors. Next on the agenda was a $10 billion line of credit from China. George Owusu's and E-O's assets were seized. Kosmos was put under investigation. In 2010, Tsikata flew to China six times, negotiating with CNOOC.
When Kosmos filed a request to sell its interest in Jubilee to Exxon, the government's reaction was slow and comical. In due course, the Energy Ministry said, they would vet ExxonMobil and consider their suitability to partner a Ghanaian oil company. We intend to produce Jubilee gas first, before oil production, because our country needs more electric generation, and we will be working with world class government engineering experts from Trinidad and Tobago. Your $4 billion Exxon deal is imaginary and illegal.
The only buyer Kosmos Energy could talk to was Tsatsu Tsikata.
<end of text>
<research notes appended>
Sunday, September 16, 2018
One last birthday
I have the notion that I'm dying, no particular reason for it, a general sense of frailty. In two weeks I will be 68 years old. The last thing I want to do is shiver through another winter, and I don't see much purpose in doing that. How did old indians die? -- walk into a frozen cave, lay down and die. Better than suffering in a hospital bed, plaything for medical experiments that never work, bombarded by television. I can't think of a worse hell, inescapable TV made by evil shitheads. Maybe that's what mythological hell is like, tormented by the obscene, a long wicked laugh at my expense. Memo to Lucifer: it won't work, bub. I don't care what you or anyone else throw at me. I've been ridiculed plenty, no stranger to verbal punishment. Try physical torture.
I have to get in line with reality. No one will ever find my work, buried under a mountain of horseshit on the web, millions of people in universities pushing conventional wisdom. If you want to honor my death, play Led Zeppelin's 'When The Levee Breaks.' It propelled my first novel, listened to it looped endlessly while I wrote the action scenes. Make a note (hat tip to Alejandro): music first, then story.
Another note. Talented people are generous. I don't know that I include myself in that class, but maybe I am, always generous with other writers and filmmakers similarly situated, good work that didn't stand a micron of hope to be recognized or rewarded by the Jews. Sorry to be offensively blunt. Look around, follow the money in publishing, movies, music, stage. Drunk or sober, Mel had it right. Nice that I shared dinner and lunch the next day with him, a great guy. Not the best actor on Earth, certainly not a director, just a wonderful man with plenty of women and children. I understood him. I lost track of how many women and children I had. Someday someone will write a nice biography of Mel Gibson. That's the difference between him and me. When I die, everything I did will die with me, unacknowledged.
The world keeps secrets. Sigh. Too many to discuss. Obama's school records are sealed for a reason. Hillary destroyed emails for a reason. The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. The U.S. Constitution had little to do with deliberate rational design.
Hmph. This wasn't supposed to be a political screed, damn it. I wanted to wish myself a last happy birthday greeting. Dead certain that no one else will. There is a wife and daughter up the hill who will ignore September 30th, dissing Dad for the thousandth time. People indulge bad habits to make themselves feel superior. My bad habits are slightly different. I smoke pot to see visions, feel the beat of life; cigarettes to kill the pain of loneliness.
I think I've covered everything in essays and autobiographical stories, clips and stills in a five minute salute to myself. Happy birthday, Dorf. Long way from juvenality to Wolf DeVoon. It could have been far worse, a machinist's apprentice or factory hand.
Bye, Clare.
.
I have to get in line with reality. No one will ever find my work, buried under a mountain of horseshit on the web, millions of people in universities pushing conventional wisdom. If you want to honor my death, play Led Zeppelin's 'When The Levee Breaks.' It propelled my first novel, listened to it looped endlessly while I wrote the action scenes. Make a note (hat tip to Alejandro): music first, then story.
Another note. Talented people are generous. I don't know that I include myself in that class, but maybe I am, always generous with other writers and filmmakers similarly situated, good work that didn't stand a micron of hope to be recognized or rewarded by the Jews. Sorry to be offensively blunt. Look around, follow the money in publishing, movies, music, stage. Drunk or sober, Mel had it right. Nice that I shared dinner and lunch the next day with him, a great guy. Not the best actor on Earth, certainly not a director, just a wonderful man with plenty of women and children. I understood him. I lost track of how many women and children I had. Someday someone will write a nice biography of Mel Gibson. That's the difference between him and me. When I die, everything I did will die with me, unacknowledged.
The world keeps secrets. Sigh. Too many to discuss. Obama's school records are sealed for a reason. Hillary destroyed emails for a reason. The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. The U.S. Constitution had little to do with deliberate rational design.
Hmph. This wasn't supposed to be a political screed, damn it. I wanted to wish myself a last happy birthday greeting. Dead certain that no one else will. There is a wife and daughter up the hill who will ignore September 30th, dissing Dad for the thousandth time. People indulge bad habits to make themselves feel superior. My bad habits are slightly different. I smoke pot to see visions, feel the beat of life; cigarettes to kill the pain of loneliness.
I think I've covered everything in essays and autobiographical stories, clips and stills in a five minute salute to myself. Happy birthday, Dorf. Long way from juvenality to Wolf DeVoon. It could have been far worse, a machinist's apprentice or factory hand.
Bye, Clare.
.
Saturday, September 15, 2018
Anywhere, maybe nowhere
"Where to, bud?" the taxi driver asks cheerfully.
Imaginary dialogue that happens every few minutes. I have nowhere to go. My dog was run over by a FedEx van barreling down the hill yesterday, swerved to straddle him laying in the middle of the road on a sunny day. I called Tooie out of the road hundreds of times, made him sit and stay out of harm's way. Old shihtzus don't listen, have their own agenda. He's up at the house, broken foreleg and internal injuries, laying quietly on bathroom tile, stoned on doggie pain pills left over from oral surgery a couple years ago. Took all the pleasure out of life, as you may perhaps understand if you ever loved a dog. He was at my side day and night for nine years, slept at my feet in bed each night, rescued from a shelter at age three or four. Not knowing if he would survive, I dug a grave yesterday. Enough about that.
The prospect of losing Tooie was the last straw. Six weeks ago, I collapsed face down in the dirt in broad daylight, couldn't move, had to crawl. It left me enfeebled and now I use a hardwood cane, especially going uphill at a half stride, or is it a quarter? A slow shuffle, nothing like my emphatic stomp as a younger man, raising hell around the world before I turned 40, doing it again in my 50s, all six continents, and plugging along in my 60s to wage war with philistines, to buy property and build a house. Impossible to go further now. No money, no car, no stamina. I used myself up, every ounce of brain and muscle.
"Where to, bud?"
Well, it won't be writing another novel. I know what they cost. It won't be another movie, strictly a young man's game. It won't be a tech project. No imagination. My forte was analog and mechanical devices, neither of which are much in demand. Too old and ugly to smile, unqualified and inept as a salesman or preacher.
I said everything I hoped and wanted to say. Now it's the world's turn to do something about it, discover merit in my ideas and literary legacy. I won't hold my breath. The world has other things to do, like honor more negroes, kill fossil fuels, and impeach Donald Trump. My work was shunned and ignored. No book sales. No film rights sold.
"Where to, bud?"
I don't know. I have a few years left, perhaps, no desire to visit Wisconsin or California, and I couldn't buy a plane ticket or rent a car if I wanted to. Credit cards vaporized over a year ago, no cash in hand, $15 in my checking account, just enough to keep it open. It's a free checking account for senior citizens, no monthly fee. When I tore up the forest and built a house I ran tens of thousands through it, six figures through company accounts at Chase and Wells Fargo and Frost Bank and a bullion account at the Perth Mint. All balances zero, company defunct, probably in trouble with the IRS. The last time I filed a tax return was in 2015.
"Where to, bud?"
I don't know. Anywhere. Maybe nowhere, to die in my sleep from boredom and want. I've been postponing it as long as I could, pushed myself to write a masterpiece, kept going until I was convinced that it had been achieved in July, two months ago. I collapsed and fell down a couple weeks later, took a long time to get back on my feet. Then my dog got hit by a van. I don't think that my daughter needs me any more. All grown up, headed to college.
No strength to stand on my feet part time at a McDonalds, flipping burgers. No brain to run a complicated digital cash register. No mountain left to climb. For the first time in my life, I'm finished. Not beaten -- I carved my own way, forded raging rivers of opposition and an ocean of cowardice and despair. Certain achievements stand out in particular, like the preamble of The Freeman's Constitution, a new robust definition of justice. Whatever happens next is okay in that respect. I hammered a legacy on Earth.
Hmm. In Partners, I observed that people don't eat if there's no future. Wilda just brought me a little styrofoam box with two cold leftover onion rings and a few french fries. Wonderful. The idea of a cold Coke was overpoweringly real. Driver! Take me to a Coke machine!
.
Imaginary dialogue that happens every few minutes. I have nowhere to go. My dog was run over by a FedEx van barreling down the hill yesterday, swerved to straddle him laying in the middle of the road on a sunny day. I called Tooie out of the road hundreds of times, made him sit and stay out of harm's way. Old shihtzus don't listen, have their own agenda. He's up at the house, broken foreleg and internal injuries, laying quietly on bathroom tile, stoned on doggie pain pills left over from oral surgery a couple years ago. Took all the pleasure out of life, as you may perhaps understand if you ever loved a dog. He was at my side day and night for nine years, slept at my feet in bed each night, rescued from a shelter at age three or four. Not knowing if he would survive, I dug a grave yesterday. Enough about that.
The prospect of losing Tooie was the last straw. Six weeks ago, I collapsed face down in the dirt in broad daylight, couldn't move, had to crawl. It left me enfeebled and now I use a hardwood cane, especially going uphill at a half stride, or is it a quarter? A slow shuffle, nothing like my emphatic stomp as a younger man, raising hell around the world before I turned 40, doing it again in my 50s, all six continents, and plugging along in my 60s to wage war with philistines, to buy property and build a house. Impossible to go further now. No money, no car, no stamina. I used myself up, every ounce of brain and muscle.
"Where to, bud?"
Well, it won't be writing another novel. I know what they cost. It won't be another movie, strictly a young man's game. It won't be a tech project. No imagination. My forte was analog and mechanical devices, neither of which are much in demand. Too old and ugly to smile, unqualified and inept as a salesman or preacher.
I said everything I hoped and wanted to say. Now it's the world's turn to do something about it, discover merit in my ideas and literary legacy. I won't hold my breath. The world has other things to do, like honor more negroes, kill fossil fuels, and impeach Donald Trump. My work was shunned and ignored. No book sales. No film rights sold.
"Where to, bud?"
I don't know. I have a few years left, perhaps, no desire to visit Wisconsin or California, and I couldn't buy a plane ticket or rent a car if I wanted to. Credit cards vaporized over a year ago, no cash in hand, $15 in my checking account, just enough to keep it open. It's a free checking account for senior citizens, no monthly fee. When I tore up the forest and built a house I ran tens of thousands through it, six figures through company accounts at Chase and Wells Fargo and Frost Bank and a bullion account at the Perth Mint. All balances zero, company defunct, probably in trouble with the IRS. The last time I filed a tax return was in 2015.
"Where to, bud?"
I don't know. Anywhere. Maybe nowhere, to die in my sleep from boredom and want. I've been postponing it as long as I could, pushed myself to write a masterpiece, kept going until I was convinced that it had been achieved in July, two months ago. I collapsed and fell down a couple weeks later, took a long time to get back on my feet. Then my dog got hit by a van. I don't think that my daughter needs me any more. All grown up, headed to college.
No strength to stand on my feet part time at a McDonalds, flipping burgers. No brain to run a complicated digital cash register. No mountain left to climb. For the first time in my life, I'm finished. Not beaten -- I carved my own way, forded raging rivers of opposition and an ocean of cowardice and despair. Certain achievements stand out in particular, like the preamble of The Freeman's Constitution, a new robust definition of justice. Whatever happens next is okay in that respect. I hammered a legacy on Earth.
Hmm. In Partners, I observed that people don't eat if there's no future. Wilda just brought me a little styrofoam box with two cold leftover onion rings and a few french fries. Wonderful. The idea of a cold Coke was overpoweringly real. Driver! Take me to a Coke machine!
.
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