My Crime

[Pedro I Rengel]

My condolences.

[Mr Reasonable]

The guy lived to be 79. He was a Ranger in the Air Force, then taught Ranger school. Finished military service, and delivered mail in the hood for years until he retired, which was relatively early. So he had multiple pensions. He spend the last 35 or so years of his life single, not looking to get married. He had a hot tub, several boats, a house on a big lake, and would routinely bang girls wayyyy younger than him. He lived an amazing life. For the last 15 years everyone always calls everyone and tells us he's had a heart attack or a stroke or whatever and that he's about to die. And for 15 years I've been called an asshole by everyone for dismissing it and saying that he isn't about to die, but he finally did this time. No one's really sad or crying about it. The dude lived the dream for sure.

[Mr Reasonable]

Like a 70 something year old man smoking cigars in a hot tub with girls in their 30s. You can't be sad for him.

[Pedro I Rengel]

That's the dream.

[Mr Reasonable]

His son was one of my oldest partners in crime. For the last 2 days at his house there's been a parade of felons just standing around smoking cigarettes and moving all this stuff. I think about a lot of these guys I haven't seen in a while all showing up and I can't help but to wonder how any single one of us avoided a lifetime in prison. It's crazy standing in a room with people that you spent years committing crimes with. Things you don't even remember from back in the day come up and it just blows your mind the things you don't even remember getting away with.

[Pedro I Rengel]

I was never very successful at crime. Too straight forward and loud to get away with it. There is a way straightforwardness and loudness can be good for a crime life, but I wasn't really down for that level of massacre. Caracas, you can imagine.

Anyway. That's kinda funny. Glad you're out and about and playing the system the right way now. Beat the bastards at their own game.

[Mr Reasonable]

The dude definitely killed some communists.

[Pedro I Rengel]

I feel conflicted about military service.

On one hand, I feel the automatic disdain for it that Einstein did.

On the other, I feel the same need to stand up for US global military dominance like Einstein did.

And yet on another, and this i might accept being called evil for, I cannot imagine a thing more pure than going into battle.

I try to remain sane about it, remember what it's all for, what the alternatives are, what is actually there to work with. I didn't make the world how it is, I didn't determine the million forces that molded it to what it is or determine its dynamics. All I can do is formulate opinions on, things being the way they are, what can realistically be achieved.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Is this ok?

Vis a vis communists, I want to be like the oldschool intelligence guys, From Napoleon's dude up to Kissinger and whatnot, psychops or whatever. But I don't actually want to grab a rifle and shoot some stupid bastard just doing what he's told and doesn't really understand any of it.

[Mr Reasonable]

Different frame of mind back in those days. If the TV anchors said you needed to kill people to save America then you just did it because the rest of the world was unknown and you just had to buy whatever they were selling out of fear. Most of the people killed in wars, or at least a great deal of them really didn't have to die.

[Mr Reasonable]

Is this ok?

Vis a vis communists, I want to be like the oldschool intelligence guys, From Napoleon's dude up to Kissinger and whatnot, psychops or whatever. But I don't actually want to grab a rifle and shoot some stupid bastard just doing what he's told and doesn't really understand any of it.

The politicians all know that if too many people die then they become unpopular and it becomes harder to hold power. So the try to kill a bunch of the other people's constituents for that reason. The poor kids out there with the rifles are doing it because it may be the only way they can ever own a home or be able to routinely see doctors when they're sick. It might be the only way for them to get enough money to not have to eat cat food when they're old.

[Pedro I Rengel]

I think that's also general republican foreign affairs.

Be so obscenely superior in strength that you don't actually have to shoot anyone.

Like if war breaks out right now in Venezuela, which it might. I might have to join the fucking communists just because I have to defend the honor of my homeland. That wouled suck balls. I would rather the US bully Maduro or whoever ends up in charge into some level of sanity.

[Mr Reasonable]

You're from Venezuela? How long have you been following the whole bit about how they lost that judgement to Exxon?

[Pedro I Rengel]

Here's my thing: maybe if they did know what was out there, they would have run for their rifles even faster.

On the other thing, where military is a way to some level of dignity and financial stability, I met at least one Venezuelan serviceman like that once. Real straight up dude, wanted to do right by his family and such.

But I prefer criminals.

[Mr Reasonable]

I've always found criminals to be generally more honest and predictable and to be more of a principled bunch.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Lol, it's one of those lunatic things like China does where they want to claim a territory that was theirs 200 years ago and was lost to the then English empire, now English Guyana, and think they can just bully Guyana cause they poor. I'm glad the powers that be intervened and allowed Guyana to get its bread.

Though, no lie, some part of me does pull at me that that's Venezuelan land. But even if it were, bullying some neighbour who's really actually cool for fucked up wag the dog reasons...

[Pedro I Rengel]

If that's the judgement you mean.

Could also be a thing about PDVSA, Venezuelan state oil agency currently under military control, trying to fuck over a business partner, which they generally do, or maybe at this point also a lot of the times are so damn inefficient and incompetent they actually cost people vast sums of money.

PDVSA gets sued a LOT.

[Mr Reasonable]

Maybe the oil majors figured you'd think that, and since they couldn't get an exploitative enough deal from Chavez or Maduro, then found someone more desperate nearby and took advantage of the situation that way. A few things we know for sure, oil fields don't follow along property lines, the oil will eventually be in the hands of those oil majors, Venezuela is going through a complex economic shift that can't be attributed solely to "socialism", and all that started to happen when they pissed off the US who wanted to profit...probably more than they should have off another people's resources.

[Mr Reasonable]

All corporations get sued a lot.

[Pedro I Rengel]

I've always found criminals to be generally more honest and predictable and to be more of a principled bunch.

Me too. By a long shot.

Just one more reason I trus Trump, who made his bones dealing with the Mafia and shit. Not these goody two-shoes two-faced basterds.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Maybe the oil majors figured you'd think that, and since they couldn't get an exploitative enough deal from Chavez or Maduro, then found someone more desperate nearby and took advantage of the situation that way. A few things we know for sure, oil fields don't follow along property lines, the oil will eventually be in the hands of those oil majors, Venezuela is going through a complex economic shift that can't be attributed solely to "socialism", and all that started to happen when they pissed off the US who wanted to profit...probably more than they should have off another people's resources.

Dude, you know so very drastically little about this issue. Catastrophically little. I say that as a friend.

[Mr Reasonable]

I dunno man. A lot of people think that a lot of conflict in the world is a result of people feeling like they're being slighted out of the wealth that's under their feet. Exxon had rigs in Northern Iraq on deals they'd struck with the Kurds when Isis "came out of nowhere" back in the day. They had to abandon the rigs and evacuate. Kurds were selling Iraqi oil and exxon was buying.

[Pedro I Rengel]

It's far, far too long of a story for me to get into right now.

I'll just point one thing out.

Early Chavez, we had gotten to a point where, by law, any oil venture in Venezuela had to be owned by minimum 51% by PDVSA.

Then, whenever he needed cash, he would demand an even higher percentage, the project had already been started, and offered no compensation.

these dudes ain't even criminals. They're thugs.

I still kinda love em though. But they can't be trusted to run one of the largest oil operations on the planet.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Fuck, even Russians will periodically sue PDVSA.

In their case though they tend to find a way to work it out. Maybe no rig ever really gets built, maybe a friend of a friend has something for you and you forget about this whole business.

Ironically, EXXON has to stick with the suit till the end because they don't have that option, US law is too stringent and effective.

[Pedro I Rengel]

You are giving me one size fits all narratives, I on the other hand have been closely studying the development of the oil industry in Venezuela as well as its entire history.

You know far too little on this one guy. You don't even know.