Four Points of Discontent

I'm tired of being an alcoholic. Sure, I drink Hamm's now, instead of those awful Four Lokos and Camos; but I'm still spending money on an addiction I can scarce afford — without depriving myself of other, more worthwhile objects and enterprises — and which returns are only ephemeral or problematic (e.g. I lost my home Internet service because of spending money on booze instead of paying my bills). To add insult to injury, if I'm to endeavor to quit everyone will point me to a parasitic pack of under-qualified New Age-pablum social workers and quasi-religious twelve-step cultists! Which I'm not about to do unless court-ordered or it proves to be of enormous material benefit to me.

I'm also pretty damn sick of people. I've never really cared much for my fellow man, having opened my eyes up long ago to the bitter reality that we're all irrational self-serving animals who are at best only halfway (and highly situationally) decent — whose civilité is born not out of intrinsic anglicness but rather out of prosperity and literacy; torch our schools and wither away our agricultural surplus, and what you'll get is a tree full of vicious chimps who happen to occasionally be articulate. It's not just the influx of vapid out-of-staters whose forebrains seem only to be capable of earning and spending money, it's the troglodyte bottom-feeders I seem to be stuck with in terms of social opportunities; people who only drag each other down into a mire of barbarism, addiction, and pauperish predation. I have two good, have-it-together friends, but the only people who can and will spend any significant amount of time with me are street and welfare drunks, most of whom don't even read!

And, then there's canning. Is this seriously the only way I can earn a living (if such it can be called)? I'm going out nearly every day, pushing a rattling sidewalk-hogging behemoth that underscores the disgrace of my life with distressing visibility ... for ten to twenty dollars! And that's in summer; come winter ten a day may well be the most I'll be able to glean. There ares people who spend that much a day on Starbucks swill and food cart lunches! Even if I were to successfully abstain from alcohol (which is pretty damn hard after three hours of fishing nickels out of trash cans), there's only so much I can do with so little. Plus, it's hell on my deteriorating legs, which is why sometimes I have to take a day off.

Plus, I'm buying food with some of that money now, and by “food” I mean microwave burritos and packets of ramen from the Dollar Tree. That's right, I lost my food stamps because I'm not collecting social security or quaffing methodone, and am unemployed. The reform eneacted at the beginning of this year stipulates that unless a person is working or volunteering somewhere for twenty hours a week, (s)he's no longer eligible to receive food stamps unless (s)he's in some kind of addictions treatment program or is certified disabled. Or chronically homeless; because apparently sustenance rains down from the ceilings of those poor who are housed. So, my diet has sunk into the Van de Camp's morass, with who knows what dire and lasting damage being done to my health as a result.

Is there a way out? I know some Clackistanian tea-party troll would suggest that I “just get a job”, which is as useful and edifying (not to mention sincere) as exhorting someone to “just wish upon a star” — at least to someone whose résumé is worth less than the origami it can be folded into. Still, that is a long-term goal of mine, if only to save up enough money to get the hell out of this benighted poverty-pimp turnstile of a town that's going to California in a handbasket. I could also “just” quit drinking, too; which I will have to do because I'm not about to suffer AA meetings. I'm not even going to conjecture on finding a tolerable niche in the tree of shaved and docile chimps. I'll just have to figure it out and make it happen, somehow without selling my soul to “spiritual” balderdash or padding the paychecks of Forbidden City bureaucrats and college grads with junk degrees.

Bed Bugs

Fucking bed bugs. For the third time since I've moved in here I've been blighted by the bastards, just like at the last place I lived in, albeit more frequently. There are fortunately two good things to be said for this particular pest: they're unobtrusive blood suckers who so far haven't indicated any tendency to transmit blood-born diseases — unlike those nasty mosquitoes — and they're nice and democratic — a plague on the houses of both princes and hovels of paupers. They're still fucking bugs, though; I wouldn't put up with spiders crawling over my face when I slept outside (avoid ivy!), nor will I suffer fruit flies buzzing my ears, roaches nibbling on my bagel dust, and bed bugs feasting on my hemoglobin whilst indoors.

Alas they're distressingly prevalent; I wonder how many people remember this wasn't a problem fifteen years ago. Your buddy can drop off a hitch-hiker while on a visit, you can pick up any number of them from clothing or bedding articles plucked off the street, and I've even heard of them crawling out of public library books! They can also be pretty persistent: they can lay dormant for months in pretty cold weather, their eggs are hard to kill (high heat is usually prescribed for clothing and bedding), and even though they tend to be lazy when well provisioned they're perfectly capable of foraging for food (i.e. from one apartment to another). Pest control is the only reliable way to exterminate them; rubbing alcohol kills the bugs but not the eggs, Pine Sol® may or may not kill eggs, I've heard of but not personally seen the effectiveness of powders ... in terms of controlling them yourself these measures probably only keep a problem from becoming an infestation. I will probably start baking library books in the damn oven for an hour, since I can't toss them in the dryer — lol at least not when using my friend's card.

I'm reasonably confident this most recent incursion was inadvertently introduced into my apartment by me picking up something from outside, though I don't know precisely what its vehicle was; I just know that the only person who's been over is someone who's place gets regularly inspected and cleaned. As a precaution I've decided to no longer include bottles and cans from the building garbage room in my gleanings. I'm also not picking up any clothing unless at the time I have a plastic bag to store them in and am willing to pony up the three dollars to wash and dry them that same day. It really is like you're besieged on all sides when you live in subsidized housing: as if market forces, ignoble cretins, the politically whimsical and byzantine protocols of government and social services bureaucracies, and lead paint weren't already enough!