Anti-Tipping Campaign?

Tipping seems to be a contentious topic for social dialog for some people; for how long I don't and care not to know, though I suspect it's a gripe that's been around as long as table servers have been recieving gratuities. I was made aware of this Saturday night by Gunga Din, a former peer of the streets I've known for a few years, when I mentioned in passing that I'd only been tipped out seven dollars by my servers. Yeah, I was complaining, but unemphatically because I don't revolve my life around what I consider to be a fickle ancillary fund that's good mostly for throwing at frivolities. Apparently some people have been raising a social media ruckus seeking to eliminate the custom, which was confirmed in a couple blog posts I perused yesterday morning.

First off, I'm all for tipping. As a dishwasher, of course, I don't actually expect getting tipped out, at least not insofar as I plan my finances or activities around it. But, I do get tipped out, and it's nice; it's how I get to eat my favorite Chicago-style gyros and smoke Turkish Royals ... be a denim high-roller one night out of the week. But, indeed, I agree with some of those against the practice, that it's become a bit of a snooty proletarian entitlement and is genteel conduct that's exercised somewhat idiotically. Tipping is for being waited on, that's it. I don't tip the food carts, nor will I tip a barista. Some people tip servers — also food carts and baristas — because they feel it ought to be done because these employees only earn minimum wage. However, by that logic just about everyone from check-out baggers to skinflick rental clerks should be getting tipped.

Whenever I dine out with my little Moon Goddess, we tip. She tends to offer the customary twenty-plus percent, even for mediocre service; I generally tip around twenty percent for decent service, ten or fifteen (or once a Cuck E Cheese token! lol) for substandard service, and usually up to forty percent if the service was awesome. Does that make us good people? In my case, most definitely not; I'm not all that great a person, regardless how free I make with my largess. But, I have enough presence of mind to realize that I'm not paying just for the food when I eat out — that's what grocery stores are for. As such, it's pretty rube to not tip someone to set and clear your table for you; as you afflict the public with your bullshit presence, which the server must either obligingly partake in if you extend an invitation to or vigilantly leave unmolested should you prefer to be selfish about it.

I don't get the hostility toward servers specifically, and food-service workers generally. Nor do I relate at all to this busybody business of fussing over other peoples' money; why are there people out there who feel compelled to preach some sort of antagonistic gospel proscribing generosity and civility in personal spending? Hell, why are we Americans so into each other's personal business, anyway? All my life I've beheld the sorry spectacle of a society comprised largely of people trying to browbeat and bully each other around: what to eat, how to spend money, who to marry ... how to fuck even! If this anti-tipping brouhaha becomes a serious movement, I'll be fine as a dishwasher ... but I'll be doing that whilst living on a boat and isolating myself from my fellow Americans as much as a man can who works and lives.

Back in the Kitchen!

I started a new job as a dishwasher at an Australian pie restaurant Saturday evening. That I managed to get the job strikes me as sheer good luck: on Wednesday I responded to the Craigslist ad with a flippant anti-corporate tirade as a way of telling the business owner about myself, whereupon I was surprised to hear back from her asking me if I could come in Thursday for an interview ... and even more surprised that the interview went well enough for her to hire me out of a total of five applicants (I was pretty tired that day, having woken up at four and gone canning early as a result). I guess I seemed like a serious, motivated, and culinarily sophisticated enough guy?

Or the other four guys were inarticulate dolts. Apparently the guy I replaced was fired because he walked off the job during a rush to smoke a cigarette, and was gone for over half an hour, and hadn't even told anyone he was leaving! I wouldn't be surprised if it was the look of indignant consternation that crossed my face upon hearing this during the interview that got me hired; you just don't do that shit!

I'm only working Thursday through Saturday evenings, probably in total an average of sixteen hours per week. Manageable, considering my legs and my social ineptitude and the fact that I haven't worked in any official payroll capacity in almost nine years ... well, okay, almost one-and-a-half years if the Georgia Hotel is to be counted. Saturday impressed upon me that this isn't a typical madhouse food factory hand dishwashing job; most restaurants will squeeze as much prep out of a dishwasher as they can, but since we receive pies delivered from the sister restaurant that's in charge of pie production I'll probably never be beleaguered with much of that ancillary duty.

Yeah, I totally lucked out, and I'm going to work hard for these guys and keep this job. Saturday wasn't busy because people were carousing the streets in costumes and getting wasted, so it turned out to be a perfect day for training. It came as quite the surprise to me that I figured everything out so quickly and no longer needed any guidance after a couple hours into the shift; either the job really is easy or I have a sort of subconscious eidetic recall when it comes to restaurant work. I was even told by the manager that already on my first day I was out-performing another dishwasher who's been working there for years; awkward and somewhat impolitic on her part.

Job Search

I can see why a lot of people who are on the streets or in subsidized housing don't look for work. Of course I'm referring specifically to those who are mentally and physically able to hold jobs. Sure, some people are lazy, but it's ignorant to blame unemployment solely on laziness; I wouldn't be at all surprised that proportionately speaking there are more gainfully employed slackers than there are unemployed — it's been my personal experience that only half of my co-workers were worth their presence on the job, and out of them only maybe a quarter of them were real go-getters. And, yeah, jobs tend to suck, many of which seem not to pay enough for the shit that's endured while on the clock.

No, it's the getting shot down over and over again that does it, andd that goes into the rejection. A lot of us poor folk are good workers, and indeed many of us would rather work than eke out a meager existence panhandling or canning (contrary to a widely held belief, even most freeway sign fliers don't make as much in a day as they would putting those hours in at minimum wage, and even during summer I've never been able to earn in eight hours canning what I would flipping burgers). But, we don't look good on paper — even those among us whose looks belie our lifestyles — and corporations have grown not only increasingly unforgiving of checkered pasts and inglorious circumstances, but they have in fact grown outright hostile to their employees.

Which brings me to the why of the rejection, the calls that are never returned or the interviews that end on a sour note: corporate culture. Big Business views us all — even those who are educated and skilled and supposedly indispensable — much as nobility used to view their serfs; fidelity is expected from us, even while we're regarded more as potential liabilities than as potential assets — some Sheriff of Nottingham asshole is always hovering over your shoulder ensuring none of the king's game is being poached (woe betide the ballpoint pen thief!). We're all civilian draftees in a mercenary army that specializes in marching to the beat of douchebag doges' drums. Criminal background checks, credit checks, personality tests, and questions that effectively screen out the disingenuous ass-kissers from honest people just out to pay the rent and enjoy the occasional night out ... this is still for a job, right?

So, yeah, I've applied at over a dozen places so far, and nothing's panned out. As we know, the one gas station job didn't work out. I almost got hired to cook for a bar, but a clusterfuck typical of family businesses run by multiple siblings resulted in me getting jerked around by two brothers, both of whom hired people — only I ended up eating sandal dust in the end, and ended up back at Square One. That was bitterly disappointing. So, today I get the honor of handing in an application to the nearby Dollar Tree, where everyone looks as thrilled to be there as that poor guy in the Futurama work motivational poster. And, of course, I'm going to wonder more and more as I go along “Do I even really want this?”

The Inconveniences of Terrestrial Meteorology

Well, what a time for a dying typhoon to careen into the Pacific Northwest! The reason I say this is because I can't go out and make any money canning when it's raining steadily hard enough to soak through my tattered shoes; not to mention that my North Face® jacket has long ago lost its waterproofing. And, well, I don't have any ski pants, either — living indoors has encouraged me to grow complacent, and so I'm not equipped for rain, nor am I for the inevitable chill that should seep in by the end of November.

Which means I'm going to have to wear plastic bags around my feet on the rainy days until I find or can afford to buy a new pair of shoes, though not until tomorrow or Monday, since this weather isn't encouraging people to meander the streets whilst quaffing electrolyte water and Italian sodas. Yes, I do regret the job not having worked out, especially now that I'm going to have to can up about $110 by the tenth of November in order to keep my electricity running and my phone service. At least I was smart enough to get a new phone and service, so that I'm better able to effectively look for work.

Not that I have high expectations of a fruitful job search; the only thing that will probably be going on will be holiday temp work, which I'm reluctant to even consider. Besides, I need to get my new state ID, anyway. And, of course, when I went down to Transition Projects for help I was rebuffed with a requirement for specific documents verifying yes, I am indeed a broke-ass mofo, that of course I don't have. I'll be back Tuesday laden with small ream of papers for them to choke on, I assure you — if I can't afford to pay my utilities I can't afford to pay for the ID card.

It may be time for me to try flying a sign again, at least on the days I can't or won't go canning. Maybe someone will offer me a job? lol Maybe one that doesn't suck? Do those things even exist anymore? I don't even know people with degrees and résumés that enjoy their jobs, save for vapid corporate drones whose sole purpose in life is to work out and Botox their way into being Zeus' cup-bearer whilst watching reality TV and engaging in such riveting erudition as the shortcomings of this year's Seahawks' defense and whether or not that cute skinny-jean barista boy is single.

Fleeting Employment Stint

So, I worked at a Chevron four days, and everything was going pretty well ... until one Wednesday evening when I received a text including a photo of my new schedule. Instead of being off work until the weekend and then attending the lot (I'd been working the store the past couple days), I was to work Thursday through Saturday at the damn store again — bantering with customers and checking IDs and looking out for thieves. “Fuck that!” I thought reflexively, and so I no-called and no-showed.

I signed up for a part-time job, which I figured would entail at most two days on the lot and two in the store. Anyone who knows me knows that I grow agitated with prolonged exposure to my fellow human beings; it's a HUGE part of why I despise living downtown and am generally on edge any time I have to stand in a meal or food box line (or even at a grocery or convenience store). Put simply, my seemingly disintegrating legs can't handle forty hours a week of standing, and my delicate psyche can't put up with forty hours a week of human interaction.

Not only that, but I found it galling that my employer would exhibit a landed gentry mentality, treating me like some hapless, festering bumpkin of a Medieval villein. If I owned a business I would NEVER change an employee's schedule on such short notice and in mid-week like that! I would call people up and see if I could make whatever changes my employees would be amenable to, and simply work the rest of the hours the business is open; in fact, as a business owner I would be prepared to spend long hours on the job ... because that's just reality: people call in sick, quit, or what have you.

I suppose I could have weathered it out; manned up, toked my CBD for anxiety and gobbled up Tramadol® for pain, and resigned myself to a full week-long vicissitudinal schedule of incessant human traffic and commerce. Would the money have ultimately improved my life more than the work have diminished it? I don't know: I've been spoiled all these years canning: I set my own hours, work at my own pace, answer to no one greater than a very forgiving set of societal mores, and can just plug into my music and tune out (as best I can) the vexing human environment — shit pay in trade for autonomy and no obligations.

I can see how this could send certain Clackistanian Tea Party trolls into paroxysms of rage: the government pays my rent, so I don't have to grit my teeth and kowtow to a humiliatingly corrupt system wherein making ends meet means working harder at shit jobs for less every year, wherein American-Dream prosperity is a reality that flees like a dream upon awakening, even as cheap Chinese bread-and-circus crap commodities grow more expensive ... and, good luck if there's enough retirement money to buy a trailer to park on a lot full of dope fiends!

My knee-jerk response to such misplaced anger is to say “it's not my fault,” but even voting Democrat I've participated in some of the most egregious one-percent collaborating; the Clintons have been even worse finance deregulators and union busters than their prior Republicans. We're all in it together, slowly filling out little boat full of our own turds, until it's time either to wait for Sharknado or to embrace coprophilia.

Building Security

Guess who I saw enter unit #100 at around 2:55 PM earlier today? I forget his name, but a thuggish jackass who used to live in unit #204 ... until he was forcible evicted by the county sheriff. This is the second time this same chick (with perhaps the building's most annoying yappy dog) has let the guy in; who is needless to say eighty-sixed from the building. I'm telling the building manager Monday that while she doesn't do anything about it (by all rights the lady in unit #100 should be evicted!) I'm going to be bombing every single advocate and lawyer in Portland with messages beseeching aid, or at least advice or referrals. I'm tired of feeling safe only within the confines of my apartment.

Before this creep there was Liam squatting in unit #202, whose intended — and totally strung out on meth and a predatory sleazeball — occupant was reputedly languishing in a hospital. The resident never returned; Liam did twice that I saw, after he was eighty-sixed. There's been a “serious” meeting about this, in which along with the rightful occupant of #210 three others were singled out as suspected drug dealers. Then there was Richard, who used to live in the basement: he attacked a female neighbor and then repeatedly threatened the building manager's life because she filed eviction proceedings for the assault. He, too, has snuck into this building at least once. These are merely the more egregious instances: I saw a street kid crashed out in the lobby a couple Saturdays ago, and last winter I've thrice walked past small clusters of hyperlight zombies warming themselves on the stairs with their post-apocalyptically cobbled BMXs.

Poor people are goddamn riffraff, and that's a huge reason why we're despised by our blue-collar peers (who in America are, at economically, close neighbors). We just don't know how to behave: stolen bikes and piles of needles and trash in camps strewn along Springwater Corridor have cured Clackistanians of the delusion that bums and welfare rats are worth anything better than jail, three to four smashed-out car windows and screaming Four Loko-fueled domestic disputes in Wallace Park, both occurring DAILY, are doing likewise to the yuppies in Northwest Portland. This building has done it to me, too; which underscores yet again my dispute with Portland's poverty pimps' and poverty whores' monomaniacal pursuit of low-income housing “solutions” — quite a number of people simply can't be housed, except maybe in Arkham Asylum or the sunken city R'yleh.

Remember that “serious discussion” I mentioned? Nothing has come of it. If you're going to make a building safe and secure for those of us who aren't into sexual predation, violent assaults, burglary and theft, hoarding mountains of maggots shuffling in giant trash bags (wherein once were things like banana peels and empty tubs of ice cream), and slinging meth or dope (or crack), the following are absolutely necessary: security cameras in the laundry room, the trash room, the lobby, the hallways, and the stairways; and 24/7 staffing, both as a deterrent and to support residents in emergencies. There's not much more that can be done, but those two things are much more effective than a weekday daytime manager who often isn't even in her office when she's supposed to be! Oh, and cameras in the basement and the lobby; good only for confirming that yes, So And So did sneak in and out of the building, by golly!

Maybe that's the idea: make it so Wild Wild West in the hinterlands of American prosperity and civility that we all become so conveniently cutthroat and petty-greedy that we keep the professional and trade wage slaves in line ... if they were to somehow manage to lump all us terrifying sad sacks together and look at us from the news satellites out in orbit, all they would (subliminally) see are the words OBEY!!! In the meanwhile, we'll too busy victimizing each other in a world-sized snake pit to effect the positive changes our so-called betters are themselves already too willfully ignorant or cowardly to be.

Social Opportunities?

Last night was a sort of awakening for me, regarding my stance in society and my social prospects. Like almost everyone else who is poor or destitute, I've long held firmly to the belief that I'm a worthless piece of shit that nobody with all their teeth and all their brains would desire rapport with. This belief is subconscious, of course, and made all the more difficult to acknowledge because I've wrapped it in a veneer of class-warfare arrogant disdain for the meritocrats and aristocrats who inhabit the floating world above me.

Techno Destructo and I were sitting on our “stoop” — a step around the corner from the building he currently lives in and I used to — drinking beers, smoking weed, and listening to music from my phone; the usual — when out of nowhere I find myself engaged in a long conversation with a girl named K—, who had just sold some clothes to the Buffalo Exchange across the street. I don't even know if I can remember how long it's been since I so thoroughly enjoyed a conversation with anyone other than my little Moon Goddess! Ayn Rand even managed to slip into the list of topics.

Did I get those digits? No, and I probably should have attempted to, since now that I've decided to quit drinking (for good? Let's hope so!) and resume (albeit halfheartedly and half-assedly) looking for work, I'm in sore need of new acquaintances. Perhaps that's the true measure of my self-confidence, the fact that I balked at taking the exchange to the next level ... because at the end of the day even people who ladle soup out to us bottom feeders don't want to hang out and play cribbage with them. Still, it was nice to spend time with someone not totally fucked up or wasted or crazy like the vast majority of my peers.

Not that this isolated incident belied my Untouchable social status, mind you. It's just nice to occasionally encounter an exception to the rule.

Time to Look for Work Again

I know I've said this before — and in fact have both followed through on it and failed miserably at it — but I'm going to get a job. This canning isn't getting me anywhere but struggling bitterly with finances, with a self-image that's spiraled into the drain so bad that it's caused me to become antisocial and even to take out my insecurities and frustrations on my beloved friends, and also with reluctant white-knuckle sobriety. I want a cat, a halfway decent smartphone, a better computer (no Internet service, though! I'll just game away all my free time), a driver's license (I don't even know how to drive!), and the ability to explore hobbies that require an initial outlay that chump change can't provide (like glass work).

Which means I'm going to need to draft up some kind of résumé that will successfully shine the shit of my employment history, get a haircut and lose the beard (unless I can get it trimmed somehow), probably get a new state ID card, and go out there and beat my feet — take time out from canning to drop the résumés off. I'll just have to hazard being forthright with the prospective employers and hope I luck out and find someone who isn't a corporate jackass who counts his ballpoint pens every day after his workers leave for home. Also, I'm going to have to be careful about any job offers, since my last attempt at this resulted in scraping boogers off the walls of a roach-infested shooting gallery; also, my legs aren't in great shape, so no standing at an assembly line forty hours a week.

Honestly, I hate jobs. It's always seemed to me that workers, even the skilled ones earning triple-digit salaries, are little more than those dreaming bodies in the Matrix, being imprisoned and siphoned of their energy by inhuman overlord machines (the metaphor fails at that last part, however, because our human overlords are if anything pathologically more than human). Not to mention the fact that most work seems to amount to fueling the gluttonous desires of a rapacious species hell bent on frittering away the beauty and bounty of the world one needless commodity and one indulgent service at a time. And, well, being an unskilled worker, people like me tend to get worked almost as hard as children in coal mines did a couple hundred years ago — and are just as disposable.

But, I'm probably going to get my gas shut off next month, I'm eating mostly garbage, I disgrace myself daily pushing a damn shopping cart full of what most people view as trash, I can't even afford to camp out at Hood River or Venice Beach every now and then to clear my head of the Portlandia miasma that's poisoned my mind all these years ... and I'm just not getting anywhere at all, and not even enjoying being a loser now that I somewhat give a damn about life. Yeah, even if I end up living in a camper and pumping gas, that'll be fine with me.

Welcome to Portland, Albania!

Just who in fuck ARE these new people settling into the cracks and cockroach nests of my once fair city? I pretty much know who the higher-caste immigrants are: mostly Californians, either Bay Area techies or Orange County real estate rock stars. As much as I despise California — it epitomizes all that is vapid and voracious about American corporate consumer culture — I'm realizing in increasing horror that those guys are just PRICING me out of here. Whatever's falling out of the boxcars onto my streets is woefully Balkan in its savage barbarism; these wretched new young thugs may well end up PUSHING me out of here.

I was walking from downtown to my Northwest Portland neighborhood of canning and respite from the neighborhood Bedlam on Sunday when yet another window was opened up to me on the emerging street landscape of violence and crime. I ran into a guy — a sixty-three year-old guy, mind you! — who had just gotten out of the hospital for having had his nose punched in by a girlfriend-beating douchebag in a fit of jealousy. If that weren't outrageous enough, this occurred shortly after having been released from the hospital for head trauma from another class act ... who smashed a wine bottle on his head for NOT GIVING HIM A SMOKE! And, again, the victim is sixty-three, and also limited in mobility (requiring the assistance of canes or walkers). Two violent assaults resulting in two visits to an urgent care center within twenty-four hours of each other!

While I've only lived in the welfare hotels and on the streets here since 2000, I know from suburbanite young-adult “slumming it” excursions and from accounts from elders I deem of (mostly) sound minds, that this kind of shit didn't afflict the lumpen-proletariat outside of crack houses and gone-sour dope deals (and domestic squabbles) twenty years ago. Indeed, it wasn't until about ten years ago that I started to notice a trickling in of loose-cannon aggro into Portland's more bilious of social humors. And, WHERE IN FUCK ARE THE COPS? Furthermore, WHY AREN'T THESE ASSHOLES IN THE SLAMMER? Sixteen years ago I had to worry about losing the backpack I lived out of when staggering shitfaced; now people have to worry about their similarly unfortunate peers yanking it out from beneath their heads as they're sleeping, with a few kicks to the head and ribs to discourage dissent.

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!

Canning Paradigm Shift

Even though I'm on the verge of yet another financial crisis, I just haven't been able to bring myself to go canning. I'm not even sure I'll be willing to make myself do it for even just a couple hours this evening, after what will probably be another bland disappointment in the guise of a healthy vegetarian dinner.

One of the things I dislike about it is that the longer I'm at it the more likely I'll cave into the temptation to drink, something I've been intending to put an end to for embarrassing numbers of years! This means I'm probably going to start tomorrow going out twice daily on micro canning runs of four or five dollars apiece, with the option to collect more if superfluity happens upon me; the idea is not to be at it for more than three hours at a time. Another thing that bothers me about canning is the presence of my betters and the imagined stares and mockery I perceive emanating from them like all people sensitive to the notion of dignity imagine when they feel they're disgracing themselves in public. The result has been that I drink up most of the money earned and eat nothing at all because I've skipped the free meals in favor of more vain striving and even more beer. This has made for a surly and depressed ball of snakes for a psychology whose teeth is always on edge. To minimize my exposure to the more affluent primates of Northwest I'm going to go out early in the morning and later in the evening, instead of during the afternoon and early evening like I have been.

Theoretically I could cultivate a dissociate mentality, something like the clinical detachment doctors charm us with as we languish in our hospital beds ... but, a) I'm a social animal, and b) I'm a mentally untrained one who would probably require some time to cultivate the healthy self-image and emotional maturity required to not let such things get to me so much. What I can do in the meantime, other than mitigating the galling effects of canning on my psyche, is to simply refuse stressing about what is already something of an ordeal. It's chump change, anyway; and since I've always been reluctant to give much of myself to real jobs that pay minimum wage and don't even offer free meals why would I invest so heavily of myself into what is merely gleaning? Seriously! On a good day I pull in maybe a little over three dollars an hour; bad days can see hourly earnings fall below a single dollar. In the long run I'll earn more from canning by quitting drinking and being chill about it than by whirling through the neighborhood like a one-man locust army whilst quaffing copious Hamm's® on the clock. It just sucks that nobody offers me chances at work or even getting a job like happens to people who panhandle; I guess the assumption is we're doing this because we'd prefer not to work? Work sucks, don't get me wrong; but a shitty job that pays quadruple what another shitty job pays is still more desirable.

If worse comes to worst, I'll let the gas get shut off until I can afford to get it re-connected, and just hope that Home Forward doesn't catch wind of it until it's no longer an issue (I've heard that utility shut-offs can jeopardize one's housing). Because I foolishly and prematurely locked myself into a contract with Century Link® for home Internet service, I can probably expect $175 in bills to be due by the middle of next month. Which I suppose probably has some people wondering why I haven't aggressively sought a job ... what every tea-party jerk thinks is the panacea to the pampered indolence of the lumpenproletariat. I'm going to, actually, but I want to be reasonably confident I'll be mentally and physically capable of getting and keeping a job. Else, what would be the point? Besides, my ID is expired, so that has to be renewed before I even think of handing in résumés ... which fiction I need to start working on. (It has to be fiction if anyone is to read even halfway through one without laughing or snorting in derision.)

Black Hitler in the Meal Line

I was standing in line at Trinity Cathedral yesterday, waiting patiently for my used-to-include-delicious-Blue-Death-chili food bag (like a sack lunch, but with canned goods), when suddenly a verbal altercation behind me pierced the wall of sound I like to surround myself with whenever I'm out suffering the babbling brook of humanity.

It was yet another angry black man from out of state, who is so bitter about being in a mostly white town that he projects his discomfort and anxiety onto the nicest white people in the country by accusing them of being racist — another New Portland social phenomenon I'm already beyond sick and tired of. I've even heard the occasional black go so far as to assert that they CAN'T be racist! Yet my experience has been there's a lot more black-on-white predation in this town than vice versa. So, you're getting back in touch with your African heritage by selling some credulous cracker oregano sprayed with Lysol®? Healing the generations of pain born out of slavery and segregation by punching a white guy in a church lunch because he wouldn't let you use his Tapatío®? It's embracing of victim-hood — especially endemic among the impoverished — that encourages worldviews and lifestyles that hinder anyone, black or white, from feeling good about themselves and living comfortable and enjoyable lives. Just think, if the Jews had done in Lisbon in the fifteenth century what black people are doing right now in Baltimore, they wouldn't have even lasted long enough to experience the Holocaust! Not only that, but victims have a distressing tendency to turn into abusers, ensuring a world perpetually enshrouded in darkness.

If I understood the situation properly — which I was at first trying not to because it was annoying — the black guy was angry at the white guy behind him in line because he thought the latter had called him a nigger. Maybe, but this is Portland, Oregon not Atlanta, Georgia, so I'm pretty confident the conflict was born out of kill-all-the-white-people delusion; this isn't the first time I've seen black people go off similarly on the whites around them, with nary an n-bomb to have dropped out of Caucasian lips. This kind of aggressive shit-talking would doubtless have gotten them into a heap of trouble back where they come from (unless they're even more segregated back East than they were in Apartheid South Africa!), so I wouldn't be surprised if they're venting all the bile they had to suppress in public back home. (We really do indulge damaged antisocial people too much here in Portland!) Even if the guy did call the guy a nigger, his malfeasance was immediately eclipsed by the hating-on-whitey tirade that lasted nearly half an hour and was still going on even after I walked off disgusted but victual-laden. Hitler would have taken notes! Apparently we Caucasians are all corrupted by Neanderthal genes into monstrous half-human world destroyers who twist the noble science and technology of Africans to nefarious exploitative ends, and are ultimately the root of all the social evils and environmental woes of our planet. Which reminds me of how Christians until recently justified their bigotry toward black people by regarding them as being descended from Noah's cursed youngest son Ham — even though no such curse is mentioned anywhere in the bible. Can I get an “Untermensch!” from the congregation? Just WHO was being the racist in this scenario? The poor target of this Afro-American fury just stood there silently, shuffling his feet nervously, probably waiting to get attacked ... not looking at all like a Klansman.

Like I mentioned earlier, this isn't the first time I've encountered these new angry African American immigrant indigents. I get that they hate their sucky lives, probably even hate themselves for being such downtrodden losers, and like everyone who feels disenfranchised look for convenient scapegoats to paint heir bulls eyes onto. Hell, I've been doing a lot of that lately myself! Recently I've been struggling bitterly with a skewed class-warfare hatred of so-called Yuppies, going so far as to snarl and sometimes even shout out poseur “Up the Revolution!” vitriol at them as I lug my bags full of recyclables down the sidewalks in Northwest Portland. Never mind the fact that they aren't Yuppies, or they are and it's not their fault I'm where I am. Well, Mr. Wanna-Be Black Panther, you're not healing bruised race relations and in fact are only reinforcing prejudice by acting like you did yesterday; just like all I'm accomplishing when I do what I is show the so-called Yuppies just how churlish we lumpen-proletariat are.

Jerking the Turk

That sounds pretty obscene, doesn't it? I'm referring to Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk, my new source of revenue.

For those unfamiliar with it, Mechanical Turk is where you can log on and do a variety of mostly simple tasks such as digitally transcribing receipt data or selecting which of two points on an image appear closest to the viewer for money. Not MUCH money, but considering how abysmal the hourly pay rate is for both canning and flying/spanging, it's nice to be able to earn money without disgracing, sullying, or hurting myself (I messed my left hip up a few days ago, lugging goddamn glass bottles — another reason for me to hate Yuppies!). I wouldn't be surprised if someone experienced in data entry and who knows ten-key by touch could earn five or more dollars an hour doing certain jobs, but so far I seem to be averaging around $2.50 an hour. Of course, I don't get my money that same day: first my jobs need to be approved, then I need to transfer the available funds over to Amazon Payments, which then gets withdrawn to my Bluebird card — and that can take a week because for some reason we still need paper, and money does need to get physically transferred even when everhything's hunky dory electronically.

Flying was treating me pretty well the first three or four weeks, even after New Year's, which was when I figured it would die down to something meager but still worth the time spent. Nope, it was when February approached that everyone decided they hated winter — which by extension means also hating anyone else who inconveniences or otherwise irks — and was flat broke. Waiting for their billions back apparently turns Americans into stingy assholes. So, I stopped flying. It didn't land me a job, either, because I left one of my infamously long rambling voice mails for the human resources department, who promptly assumed I was bonkers or enjoying a mind-melting drug habit. I'll try again next year; maybe I'll be more willing to work with the “Lookidatcameltoe!” boors who doubtless will be my co-workers. So, for now I'm canning (when my legs and knees and hips aren't hurting) and turking ... I suppose for about maybe eight to ten dollars a day whenever I do both, which isn't at all often because data entry work isn't conducive to self-motivation.

And, well, in April I'm going to resume day labor at VOZ, which hopefully by then will be sending enough people out to make it worth my while. I'd go to Labor Ready, but I much prefer to get paid under the table. I'm not at all opposed to taxes, though in principle much of what our nation spends its money on is either throwing it into a black hole or is loathsomely amoral; I just don't want to get taxed and pay rent until I have something I'm confident will last and won't be so variable in hours as to make income calculations an exercise in craps-table numerology. Besides, now that I've lost my food stamps — thanks to that idiotic reform that goes into effect starting this year that requires people who aren't disabled (on paper, mind you!) to work and/or volunteer for twenty hours a week — I'm going to be struggling for a few months while I figure out how to feed myself on the cheap. People fail to realize that it actually is cheaper for society to pay for the rent and groceries of people who can't or simply won't buy into the corporate lie that is the American Dream; I'll totally steal from cars when I can no longer find a way to earn money legitimately, or at least acceptably (and not morally offensively) marginally.

It will be nice when Daylight Saving Time returns. It really fucks with my psychology, when it's dark before seven.

I Fly Belifrei

Where have I been? Not doing much, I'm shamelessly not ashamed to say.

Okay, I got that janitor job at The Georgia Hotel — which incidentally lasted only a couple months — but other than that I haven't done anything significantly serious or cool. That much-improved but still skeezy hotel is a dysfunctional family almost Maury Pauvich in caliber, is part of the reason I didn't last longer there (also if was outright gross); I don't do family anymore, not even for money. Any job or place lived in that drives an alcoholic to drink is bad news. Lately my building has been trying to drive me to drink, in the form of a short-fused prison-thug of new neighbor, but even so my new apartment is heaven compared to the last place I lived in, and of course the loading dock and the freeway I was homeless at out in the Land of Sweet Breezes (the Northwest industrial area).

It's been just over a year since I moved in, and all I've really done is play video games on my cheaply souped-up Craigslist computer (forget FreeGeek — I don't get along too well with nerds, for some reason). I was going to get all serious with Central City Concern, but in the end my simmering consternation and disdain for the outfit over-rode opportunism, and I gave them the finger in a colorful voicemail rant. I've been saying this forever, but social service non-profits by and large suck ... just like much of subsidized housing does; for all the valiant efforts put forth to combat poverty, it's been at best hardly any smarter or more successful than it is to patch boots with that Shoe Goo® crap. After I bailed out of the hotel job I went back to canning, supplementing that with labor gigs from Craigslist.

Taht is, until the bottom suddenly dropped out on the labor market, one mid-November weekend, when the year's rain began in earnest. Which was fine, sort of, because I was getting mostly moving gigs, and handling other people's belongings sucks — just give me a shovel and tell me where to dig or fill, is the kind of labor work I prefer. Especially if it all pays the same! However, I'm been trying out something new, which is what my title pertains to. I'm still canning, albeit with diminished zeal, but I've also taken up flying a sign by a freeway. I won't throw any numbers out, but its returns are consistently better than canning's. I don't feel all that lousy doing it, too, like I feared I would at first. Guess I'm just a parasite at heart after all, eh?

lol Whatever, it's probably going to get me a janitor job at the local stadium, where Portland's esteemed Timbers play. I really don't care much for soccer; my friends in Switzerland tried to get me into it but ultimately failed even after successfully roping my into a brief stint as the village's Keeper of the Seven Goals ... which I executed with grand aplomb, if I may be indulged. Regardless, if the job is one I can keep, and manages to provide me with an average of twenty to twenty-four hours a week, I'll finally be able to pay back my two super-awesome <3 friends, buy a camera for my on-hiatus culinary blog, build my cat a couple nice trees and me a middlin'-badass gaming system ... and eventually save up for that boat or RV, or WTFever I'll be leaving this town in years hence.

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Did I mention a cat? That's going to be whole other post, but her name's Ellie (not my choice) and she's young and thinks I'm a lame-ass who occasionally is fun to play with. This postscript is to explain “I fly Bleifrei”. When I was that lucky teen living in der Schweiz I used to see this beautiful key-lime-pie Citröen 2CV puttering around the area. It had a duck cruising above its undercarriage on little fart clouds, beside it the words in the title; it means “I fly unleaded” in English. It's a sort of inside joke, because I'm flying a sign in a miasma of unleaded (and diesel!) exhaust. I wonder how difficult it would be to get one of those cars here in The States...