Fuck Cascade Property Management!

I've had it with this slumlord property management outfit that's been maximizing some sociopathic jerk's profits at the expense of tenant safety and security, and the overall livability of the place. I had it so much a couple days ago that I probably consigned myself to a watery, wintry fate spent living outdoors again. I'd ordered some pet supplies from Chewy, because I had finally resolved to get a cat. It was a pretty big purchase for me, eighty-five dollars of cat tree, incline scratcher, natural wet food, and sundry ... and the stuff never arrived! Sure, I called FedEx, but I knew it was the building's fault somehow: ever since I've moved into this place, the actions of management have consistently sent the message that we residents of this building are merely free-range chattel, similar to the hapless dreaming humans in The Matrix who fuel the machines' energy needs. After two years of bullshit it was the last straw, and I blew up last week, bombarding the corporate office with angry voicemails and making it more personal the two times I managed to blockade-run the reception wall. While I wouldn't normally worry so much about my housing, I'm already on probation from when I lost my cool in the lobby a while ago.

What I wanted to know, and property management didn't even deign to answer me, is why in fuck only a handful of drivers from three different parcel delivery services have access to our secure mail room. As in, why isn't there a combination-locked key-safe mounted next to the resident call box for ALL parcel delivery drivers to access: a simple and not terribly costly way to help ensure all of us get visited by Santa? Which got me to thinking about the big fire we had on my floor November 5, and my indignation at the fact that all the air-filtering equipment was on the floors below while we third-floor residents were choking on toxic fumes. Which wasn't remedied until after I did a ridiculous amount of complaining about it for almost a week. To add insult to injury, my corporate mouthpiece of a building manager made it sound like she did me and my neighbors a special favor in getting an air-scrubber parked where it should have been on the morning of November 6! Even a month-and-a-half later, we're still getting jerked around in the wake of the fire: it wasn't until last week that the cleaning crew (or whatever you call the people who handle fire and water damage) scrubbed our soot-stained walls; and STILL the hallway carpet hasn't been so much as vacuumed by our occasional janitor!

Just what am I supposed to do? I could leave a dozen voicemails for the Community Alliance of Tenants, but when anyone from there will call me back and what manner of advice I'll receive is anyone's guess. My Central City Concern and other similar social service agencies won't offer anything more than the helpful suggestion to meditate and engage in positive reframing — completely useless. Nor can I afford an attorney, at least not of the caliber that could assail whatever shyster brigade Cascade throws at me. And, well, sure, I suppose I could gather some neighbors and compile a formidable litany of grievances to take to some regulatory authority or law office, but that's herding cats — most people just want to hunker down and somehow manage to deal with life's vile vicissitudes; it takes a certain kind of (obsessive and confrontational) person to be an activist or a revolutionary. Which I'm not: I moved in off the streets not only because of the elements and because I figured it'd be easier for me to get back to work living indoors, but because I was sick of the nightmare of waging a ceaseless cold war against the thieving and thugging tweakers who shared my open skies. Besides, how in hell is anyone supposed to live if he's subsumed in struggles to right the world?

Of course, it can be said that I went about things the wrong way; the tired old saw about winning more people over with honey than vinegar. But, I've always objected to that, and not merely because it robs me of the catharsis of yelling at a pole-smoker. I sincerely believe that behaving ourselves whilst attempting to stand up against oppression and exploitation by the Elite simply encourages them, and even more insidiously, wears us out and inculcates world-weary complacence in us. All it takes is some drone cooing insincere customer-service corporate-speak, and most of us are either suckered into believing our grievances were taken to heart and heeded or end up throwing our hands up in resignation and step back behind the plow. While I know all about the rotten blood-drenched fruits of the likes of the French and October revolutions, don't even think about rebutting me with fables of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi — just look at where African Americans and India are(n't) at now, decades afterward! Besides, if I can lose my housing for using foul language and raising my voice against property management, while this jackass felon meth-head down in the basement is getting away with illegally owning a handgun ... maybe it's time to fill some baskets with some heads.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Remember how good I was feeling about myself in my last post, for having rescued a damsel in distress from a soggy nightmare spent shivering on the mean streets of downtown Sodom? Well, everything sailed pretty smoothly for the first week-and-a-half: she slept in the living room while I kept mostly to myself in my bedroom, sometimes stepping outside to chat with her when I was puttering domestically or feeling social. I was aglow with the joy of having at last found someone worth rescuing: I tried something similar before with a wretched hobgoblin named Mouse, who disrespected me and my place by being a filthy and destructive alcoholic street junkie. Not so Anastasia, as the girl called herself: she was clean, sober, honest, quiet, and respectful — we even got along pretty well, in spite of our glaring differences (I'm an atheist Anarchist and she's a very old-testament deviant Christian).

Unfortunately, she's also batshit crazy. I had to kick her out last Wednesday morning because she'd graffiti-ed the thermostat on my living room heater because its brand name is Williams ... and she earnestly believes Prince William of England spurned their childhood betrothal to go whore-mongering! I didn't want to throw her out into the elements and among the wolves, but what if she did that to my wall, or something even worse? I signed a lease agreement, and part of that stipulates that I don't trash my apartment; I see no virtue in being pulled into the quicksand I'm trying to pull someone else out of. Just as I was about to chalk it up to another lesson in how to judge people’s characters or when and how to give of oneself, or whatever, when the phone harassment began, and the merely unfortunate degraded into downright scandalous and evil.

Put succinctly, there's at least three boxcar rejects smearing me all over downtown and Northwest Portland, telling everyone who would care to listen that I'm a sexual predator who picks up street chicks to drug and rape, preying specifically on the mentally ill ones! WTF? At first I thought that little troglodyte Mouse was playing head games with me, using the Dangler's phone ... but it didn't stop, and finally I ran into the Dangler himself Monday morning, whereupon the crazy hateful look in his eyes woke me up to the stark reality of the situation: this guy, who is one of the last of the unhinged Vietnam Vet bushwhackers, sincerely believes this obvious-to-the-discerning-mind slander! Related to him by a flamboyantly delusional nutter (Anastasia) and corroborated by a pathological liar (Mouse) whose reputation as one has been established for years! A guy who also packs heat.

Which again has me at a place in my life where I'm constantly looking over my shoulder. I live downtown, I use the wifi at the Central Library nearby that is for all intents and purposes a day shelter for the homeless, I still pick up bottles and cans in Northwest, and I'll occasionally be needing to stand in food pantry and meal lines when work slows down; which means I'm still vulnerable as a target for street vigilantism (though thankfully both my place of work and of residence are secure). People get killed over such allegations — even among more residential and genteel circles! Furthermore, Portland has gotten to be a rougher town to live in than it had been up until about ten years ago: it's getting crowded and expensive, bellicosity normal to benighted places like California and the South has infiltrated the placid Pacific Northwest psyche, which the political landscape has whipped into a smoldering anger, not helped the least by a tsunami surge in cheap drugs that are so laced with adulterants that users are exhibiting psychotic symptoms less than a year into their habits.

So, what do I do? Officer Miller suggested, in a fit of “protect and serve”, that I simply block the number. No thanks! I like to know who my enemies are and to be able to track and predict their movements and capabilities; not to mention the fact that the more this Dangler putz continues to harass me, the better are my chances to successfully seek some sort of recourse. No more bumfeeds, to be sure, but I'm not giving up food boxes and canning — unlike these rotten bottom-feeders I'm no longer eligible to receive food stamps (and groceries have doubled in cost in the last fifteen years). Nor will I give up using the library, at least not until I can access the Internet at home. To be sure, it will blow over, because if there's any constant law of bitter vagrant psychohistory its that of the need for targets of opportunity to project their self-loathing onto. After enough time of me not being available to intimidate and pummel, someone else will piss them off, and Whatshisface will take my place on the local shitheads' shitlist. Until then, though, I'll have to be careful.

Which ultimately leads me to one conclusion, namely that these street-trash dingos need to start killing themselves off faster! Maybe the real lesson I should have been paying heed to all along was that I AM better than these vermin, that indeed there is wisdom in the biblical injunction not to look back when leaving a life behind. And that it's time to push back, lest the barbarians spill over the walls and tear apart all that keeps people like me from embracing the despicable chimptree cannibal-tribalism of theirs that we filthy primates have been all about up until appallingly recently. Frankly, It's gotten WAY BEYOND compassion fatigue.

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The Dangler's name is Dan, and is said to be a retired Seventies porn star who is one of a handful of survivors from the Hamburger Hill massacre in the Vietnam War. We used to be acquaintances, but now I have no idea what's gotten into him. He's not the person I thought he was: level-headed, reasonably together, and someone who liked and respected me. He not only introduced me to Anastasia, but it was his idea that she stay at my place. Maybe he misses raping Vietnamese village girls?

Mouse is a rotten little hobgoblin with a can-opener nose and a hunched back, that looks like a cross between Baba Yaga and that irksome little blond on the Partridge Family. She drinks, drips dope, and goes around using people for money (even though she receives a monthly check) and instigating trouble with her bilious gossip. She hates herself, because she's stupid, ugly, and has a loathesome personality. So she punishes the world around her, for being a candidate for eugenics cleansing.

It's Been an Educational Week

I've learned three valuable lessons in the past week, powerful stuff that if applied well in my life over the coming winter may accelerate my eventual landing on Elysus' agate-strewn shores.

Work sucks: there's no point in letting it suck you into its ledger-lined maw, and no reward for dedication to it surpasses the indignity and travail demanded from you. At least not as a service worker, or along any career path that starts at points south of the college degree point of departure. This isn't news to me, but its ramifications finally started sinking in; work demands diminishing time from me, and it can also jeopardize my health! Type A people like me need cultivate detachment, lest we sacrifice our selves on an altar some undeserving jackass sociopath is blessed by. Forget about my incompetent boss, my punk-kid slacker co-workers, and the consumer drone herd that is my customers — I'm self-employed, working to meet my needs, not anyone else's.

Mainstream urban living is for termites, not people. Also nothing new to me, but Sunday's fire reinvigorated within me the desire to pursue an alternative domicile lifestyle, probably (i.e. realistically) on a boat or in a utility van. It was serious enough for my face to get covered in soot from rousting the sleepers and drunks out of bed, who were ignoring the alarm; serious enough to displace five or more units ... but it wasn't serious enough for the floor that reeked of plastic smoke to have an adequate number of of air scrubbers placed on it to clean up the air afterward; that all was being used with dehumidifiers to minimize property damage. Because profits trump health and safety. Now, why in hell would I want to buy into the Property Ownership system any more than the Wage Slave system, in light of that message from property management?

The third lesson materialized on my loving room floor in the person of Princess Anastasia, a girl I've had staying here for a couple nights. Like that rotten Mouseturd I used to have over and try to help out, Anastasia's crazy; unlike her Anastasia doesn't drip dope and quaff malt liquor, and lie out of both sides of her neck to manipulate people and sow discord. I just can't have this girl getting victimized and suffering outside, certainly not during winter! The Dangler's back, so he's paying me to have her here (since I can't afford to!) ... so I find myself in a caregiver role, of sorts. Well, I'm feeding her, at least. Meaning the third lesson is that it can feel good and be ennobling to care about and be responsible for someone. So long's it doesn't become a roll in the hay with a tar baby.

Open Letter to Local Media re. Racial Tensions

I'm asking you to reconsider your belligerent agitprop stance regarding inflamed racial/ethnic tensions in this country.

I've struggled with prejudicial attitudes in my adulthood, specifically my negative attitudes toward blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, and the LGBT scene. It always boiled down to negative personal experiences and cultural differences inciting the xenophobic instinct we all inherited from our brutal hard-scrabble evolutionary past. But I refused to let this base inclination sway me; on an individual basis, rationality and empathy always triumphed: I cracked jokes with my Latino co-workers, affably compared notes with black patrons at the jazz club I used to have coffee in, snorted coke with my Lebanese bosses, gossiped with the Korean convenience store owner about the latest episode of city hall ineptitude, and befriended a genderqueer couple who almost melted my brains in their dab bucket.

And, that's what it's really all about: acknowledging one's own fallibility, recognizing the darkness that lurks inside every human heart and refusing to grant it any further purchase. Just because I felt nervous walking down the street in an all-black neighborhood (which I've done when I was stationed at Ft. Gordon), that doesn't make me racist. Like I said, we're instinctively geared to see differences in others and to view them as a threat. Males of all stripe and color are also evolutionarily pre-programmed to be violent thieves and rapists, yet save for an appalling fraction of us we've ascended that base nature and instead flail like buffoons at courtship. The civilizing process is a painful climbing up the rungs of Jacob's Ladder, from out of the desert of being a survival machine to the Elysium of compassionate camaraderie and cooperation.

You're undoing this process by inflating passions with cultural yellow journalism. Now people who were once trying to get along have become antagonistic, no longer willing to work past their fears on an individual basis. The Zulu were rotten neighbors, as were the Aztec and the Han; colonial Europeans didn't think or act any differently than anyone else did, they just happened to be egregiously successful at it. Not only that, but it helps to remember who emigrated to this country up until recently: desperately impoverished and oppressed illiterate. Such people are easily manipulated into dehumanizing others; you see such barbarism on a much smaller and local scale on the streets of downtown Portland.

But, that's not what it means to be White, any more than scalping is what it means to be a Native or binding feet what it means to be Chinese. Revisionist history and racist propaganda work both ways: instead of perpetuating a neo-Thoreau set of myths sanctifying non-white people and demonizing the history and culture of whites of European descent, tell it like it really is — people are animals, and each and every successful culture, ethnic group, and [insert label of choice here] has committed xenophobic travesties of an opportunistic nature. But, we know better now, or rather we're learning better. In this modern era we can live, learn, love, and grow together; and while there will always be differences and disagreements, they don't need to dominate our dialog and drag us down into the depths of Phlegethon.

Unless, of course, that's what you want. Which I sincerely hope isn't the case; the Almost Good Enough of prejudiced people being polite to different-hued folk is surely superior to the vicious cycle of madness and fury we're caught up in now! Did the race riots of the '70s, the '20s, or that other '70s following the destruction of the Civil War engender any positive change, any understanding and healing? I'm no stranger to the catharsis of violence, but I'm also well acquainted with the indignity and injury of receiving it. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil was a curious post-apocalyptic film from the '50s, but I don't want to live it, nor do I think any of us deserve to.

In conclusion, I implore you to stop stirring the pot that is already boiling over. There comes a time when ratings and circulation numbers must give way to journalistic integrity, and that time is now — on the brink of too late. Be a reasoned and compassionate broker of peace. And maybe, just maybe, at the same time examine who is benefiting the most from this hot-blooded anomie.

100% Intoxicant-Free

I quit smoking weed, finally and somewhat surprisingly. Which means I'm now absolutely clean and sober, even more so than AA cultists who chain-smoke and cling to their coffee cups with the desperate attention sailors aboard sinking ships do their bilge pumps. (Okay, I, too, ingest caffeine, but from tea instead of coffee — much better!) The reason why I say it's somewhat surprising is because up until the day I quit I sincerely believed the only way I could through the monotony and stress of life was by being high at least a significant fraction of each day. In retrospect, however, it's not THAT surprising: I'd been getting tired of my dependency on the stuff for a while.

Because marijuana IS addictive. As such it IS a destructive force in people's lives, even if only minimally so when compared to addictions like alcoholism and gambling. It's just another way for people to avoid the hard work of deriving fulfillment from and coping with the stresses of life, when you boil it down to its essentials. Furthermore, it's physically damaging: inhalation of its smoke damages the throat and lungs, and daily use causes fatty deposits to form on the myelin sheaths of brain cells. It exacerbates depression and anxiery, and it hinders relationships. It impairs decision-making, and doubtless will prove nearly as dangerous behind the wheel as all the other intoxicants.

The only thing good you can say about it is that it's not as bad as booze or dope. Well, wars were less destructive when fought with swords and bows, too! I'm sure I sound like a Reefer Madness alarmist to some of the folk grateful for its legalization where they live, but I've ravaged my body and psychology with decades of severe alcoholism and smoking tobacco products, so I can't afford to play so fast and loose with my now noticeably mortal self. I quit drinking, then I quit smoking cigarettes, and recently I drastically curtailed my consumption of processed sugar; this is simply the logical next step. I was smoking daily, thinking I needed to in order to keep my head on my shoulders — and the result was a constant shortness of breath, never having money to spend on projects I only talked about engaging in, being bored whilst watching TV and playing video games (because I didn't have the brains to read), and eating fast food because I was too lazy to cook healthy meals.

Meanwhile, dispensaries all over the place are encouraging people to abuse a life-diminishing substance, flying the false flag of medical efficaciousness while simultaneously creating a connoisseur market from the corpse of a moldering Hippie counterculture. In states where it's legal, we now have Big Pharma and Bogus Pharma pushing their legal dope; both are just as corrupt, just as societally benevolent, and just as accountable — the difference lies only in scale.

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I'm referring specifically to THC, not CBD, which is a medical boon for ailments such as inflammation and anxiety. It's also not what's being aggressively marketed and sold for consumption, probably because intoxication, not well-being, is what inflates profit margins. Because capitalist business models appeal to and encourage the baser elements of human nature, and because of this can only result in some form of exploitation and a resultant unhealthy society.

A New Blog for a Glorious New Era

...of fear and loathing, that is! Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un are do-si-do-ing alongside the nuclear precipice that drops off to the abyss of World War III; the Yellowstone Caldera's pregnant with 240 cubic miles of Gaia's bastard children, while closer to home the Juan de Fuca plate is expected to annihilate the Pacific Northwest in a paroxysm of tectonic fury; and, well, even if none of that occurs there's always China casting its shadow over the future. Good times, indeed! Anyone who isn't choking on ash or having his organs sold to Party members will languish starving and disease-infested in a bleak nightmare desolation that will make Mad Max's Outback look like a weekend at Macau. And to think, for a while there I thought The End would be so kind as to transpire after my death.

"So, Corwin, what's up with Effin' Plastic?" you're not asking me, right? Watch America 3000, another one of the best worst movies ever to grace the proliferate low-budget post-apocalyptic fare. "Effin' plastic!" roughly translates as "Fucking great!" and is how I'm sure most decent folk with brains respond to every drop of bad news that falls from the carcass of Human Destiny, impaled on the World Tree years hence — yet distressingly present in portent. This used to be my Welfare Hotel blog, but since I'll probably end up dying on the streets I no longer feel that's an appropriate title for a blog that's all about living desperately on a world that's been on its last legs ever since the formation of insurance companies and stock markets.

Pretty negative, eh? I can only smirk at how quailing and dim-witted a person must be to embrace credulity and delusion in order to get out of bed in the morning; I have more respect for an embittered derelict, who for all his tiresome vitriol isn't blind to the rain in the clouds. How did Americans, who used to be tough-as-nails pioneers and bandits, become such self-gratifying pusillanimous shirkers? Not this cowboy! I respond appropriately to the donkey when he kicks me in the nuts, I don't project soft vibes whilst gasping out positive affirmations! And I'm still getting out of bed and doing my daily thing, my blood pressure's great, and my neighbor's cat still thinks I'm the coolest ever. Not only am I doing just fine, I also won't get broad-sided by the Dutchman when it finally slips through the fog.

Which I'll tell you all about; I'll regale you with tales from the outskirts of Sheol. I'm living in what will likely be one of the last remaining bastions of some sort of civilization, when the dark waters of Doom crest over our miserable masses. lol Unless of course the Juan de Fuca plate decides to bury me alive in my unreinforced masonry building ... that local lobbyists are busily encouraging city hall not to seismically upgrade. (Fucking businessmen!)

We're All Victims Here

I started seeing these signs springing up in yards and peering out windows all over town shortly after the first half-dozen protests against president Trump. While to some I imagine its message may denote something akin to the famous Egalité Liberté Fraternité that was perhaps the only worthwhile and decent part of the French Revolution, to me it's just another semiotic bit of noise pollution emanating from another dismally absurd American cultural dialectic. Have we always been so toothbrush-commercial in our ruminations, evocations, and demonstrations? Do I even REALLY want to know? I just can't take it very seriously, because guess who IS in office, and who all HAVE BEEN in office, and are in office everywhere else the grinding machinery of the sausage factory of the World System is operated. The only way I can see movements such as these being lamer and sorrier is if Spencers set up themed gas-mask kiosks at their pre-march rallies. Remember We Are the 99%? I vaguely recall it.

Actually, wait a second! I DO take it seriously, so much so that just about every time I pass by one of these escutcheons of damnfoolery I bristle in indignation — sometimes even going so far as to send a middle finger or two its way. It reeks of the same self-serving victimhood I embraced for decades, which I recently chose to divorce from my self-image and life-orientation. Not only that, but it also feels like a continuation of the Great Sell-Out of me and my kind by those we foolishly hoped stood for us. The victim mentality offends me deeply: when I realized it facilitated me pissing three decades of my life down the drain, I also realized that it's a viral germ of myriad social evils — the heart of Typhon, victims are themselves victimizers. (Why do you think the street-life posts in my blog are full of tales of thievery, fear, greed, and violence? The ugliness of the primate survival machine is demonstrably apparent down here!) We're balkanizing in part because of how this mindset closes gates and raises pikes. And it's being perpetuated largely by the fools who encourage me to meditate and yoga my shitty life on down the Yellow Brick Road, or rather by those among them who are paid to interact with me; most seek as assiduously to avoid notice of me as do the Thurston Howells they feel superior in empathy to. Apparently my pedigree of pathetic is somehow wanting to them? I who am descended from a people whose sob story is twice as long as that of slave-born African Americans and who am currently a conscripted combatant in an escalating (and very hopeless-looking) class war — that may or may not be by design?

Which is why I took another photo of my recyclables languishing behind steel gates, money going to no one in the name of ... what, exactly? It's not like I can peek through Homeskillet's window to watch him molest his niece: the bins are practically on the sidewalk! Yet he has the gall to wave a banner fifteen feet away in his yard, telling me he stands fully behind every sorry sumbitch who isn't a male Caucasian citizen ... who incidentally needs to keep his ogreish carcass off his property, or else! I wonder, if I were to somehow pull together a middlin'-fair landscaping crew from among other welfare hotel rats and street drek, would this guy hire us for a job or stick with his (I hope legal) immigrants? When you can't conceive of making the world a better place without it necessitating playing a zero-sum game of musical losers, you have no claim on enlightened OR progressive and your bumbling social engineering will result in nothing but false colors unfurled over a still sinking ship.

Taking It to the Next Level

Arbitrary life-stage benchmarks always struck me afterward as silly and ineffectual as those x-year production goals I used to hear poor Eastern European Soviet Bloc countries struggle to attain. Or even outright fascicle and sinister like the ones in Oceania that were destined for the memory hole. So, without further ado, here I am taking in a half-assed inventory of where I am and what all is happening; I've been indoors for a little over two years and seven months, am I worth taxpayer expense? lol Of course not! But I don't really care about that, anyway. I have at least gotten serious about quitting smoking and drinking, thanks to having suffered a couple serious injuries -- one of which I'm dealing with as I type. I've also managed to fuck off five jobs, but I take heart knowing that I can actually get a job when I need one and that I'm capable of keeping it for at least six months.

The result of my self-assessment is this: I need to both get a job before fall AND start taking it to the next level, this self-betterment business, now that I'm minimally functional enough to socialize a little and engage in prolonged damage control.

My diet can certainly use some help. And, unfortunately, this is a lifestyle problem that tends to bump itself up against the dirty glass ceiling of poverty, so this will probably where most of my creative work-arounds will be applied. Put simply, how much money will I be making next year, five years from now ... fifteen years from now? How much of that will be my cost of living? Will I need to settle for kazoo jam sessions and solitaire for amusement, to keep from killing myself on a diet of chili mac and red forty? As it is already, I hardly stand in any of the meal lines anymore, and the food boxes around here consist mostly of the same cheap filler I'm diligently avoiding offered at the bumfeeds ... so I'm pretty much shining the shit of a baloney sandwich diet with Centrum, home-brewed kombucha, and stuff like generic cereal and carrots and onions. I'll be more of a drain on the state if I get my food stamps back, but I'll be eating better. I'll also be eating better if I get a job, but that may well end up taking money away from my GTFOofPDX fund. I'll just have to figure it out: eat more pulses, aggressively seek out produce sales, and whatever else I can do to make eating at least some decent food somewhat affordable.

As difficult as worming myself out of the bottleneck of usuriously rising food costs will doubtless be, I wouldn't be surprised if I end up a poster child for Bragg's Aminos before I log the recommended nine(?!) hours of solid sleep a night. I was going to label this a lifestyle problem monopolized by the poor, but I know full well that plenty more affluent people work or play too much to sleep any better than I do frittering the wee hours away playing the MSU-1-hacked Chrono Trigger. I suppose I could twist my arm behind my back, force myself to bed at ten by taking a hot bath, drinking cocoa, meditating and reading ... maybe pop a couple benzos? lol No, not those. I never understood why I'm so sleep resistant; one of my few clear childhood memories is of me sitting in front of the TV at two in the morning watching re-runs, my dad passed out on the couch behind me, bathed in the light of a necromancer's wand. (Hot cocoa's one of those edibles that's VERY worthwhile to make at home, by the way. Milk's always on sale somewhere and bulk cocoa can be a deal) It can be done, of course, but it's the kind of axial change around which my entire life will revolve; the same zero-sum trade-offs pain in the ass quitting drinking and smoking still is. Maybe it'll get easier as the evenings darken earlier.

Another zero-sum game is the one pertaining to the hours alloted me any given day ... or, worse yet, likely to be remaining, overall. Fortunately I don't need to care too much about the latter; but peeing, bathing, noshing, an trying to get six hours of sleep every night shrink my available day to approximately thirteen hours by my reckoning. Even working part-time I'll probably end up with between six and seven hours a day on average to do whatever I please. Which brings me to the third matter to attend to, namely the cultivating of a stimulating, edifying, contributive, and even mildly social lifestyle; stuff like Tea Party crochet matches, Android app development, writing, you name it ... as opposed to getting blazed and playing video games, wondering why nobody cool is around to do anything better than relapsing on booze with. This is the easy one, even though yes indeed hobbies can cost money, because it's just about time management.

lol It's just never enough, is it? First it was brushing and flossing, then it was behaving myself with the bank; then I thought it was all about getting and keeping a part-time service job of some kind, and steering clear of my fave liquor store; but no, now I need to take up salads, Pilates, Kaiserspiel, and other stuff I don't even know yet. What further localized entropy-reduction demands will be made on my slacker person as I careen into the abyss? Or is that one of the darkly cool things about old age: I'll be too decrepit and there'll be too little time left to do anything worthwhile anyway, so I won't have the energy or feel the need to worry about this quasi-existential crap anymore.

Jurassic Park Dining Hall

I was going to blog about something different, but yesterday’s explosive outburst of mine at a bumfeed inspired me to write about something different. Over the years I’ve been going to increasingly fewer of the bumfeeds, for two reasons:

The main reason is because of the specter of scarcity haunting our food pantries, which ten to fifteen years ago were veritable cornocopiae. It’s been making itself pretty comfortable, too! This is no anomaly: even big-money outfits like Trinity Cathedral are starting to skimp on portions and substitute garbage filler (e.g. white rice and bread) for their formerly nutritional offerings. My diet is a pretty big deal to me, even though — perhaps because of? — for most of my life it’s been mediocre to awful. What’s the point in eating when you’re only taking in simple carbs, occasionally accompanied with morsels of meats-of-evil proteins submerged in a lipid sea of arterial dismay? I could just go back to living off malt liquor, and do without the wait, putting up with idiots, and being sober for the ordeal. You’d be surprised how much 2000 kCal costs in junk food (less than five dollars at the Dollar Tree, ten at a convenience store), compared to the same amount derived from whole foods (I can’t see how this can even cost less than fifteen dollars on a good day!).

Which makes me sound like an ingrate, right? I am, but that’s because I recognize the self-interest motivating acts of altruism and therefore don’t feel compelled to reward them with asinine pedestal-raising. It’s nice that people feed the poor, but it would be even nicer if they didn’t in effect further diminish them by serving them processed foods high in simple carbs, bad fats, and sodium. Here’s a typical bumfeed: Bar-S hot dogs with pasta salad and white rice topped with canned veggies for sides, cakes and cookies for dessert, and if you’re lucky some Tang or Crystal Light to wash it down. Again, I’m led to wonder ... are we being kept alive merely so that an Untouchables caste is maintained as an impetus for disdainfully or sympathetically prejudicial hidden social engineering agendas (Political prisoners of the Brave New World — hoorah!)?

Whether that be the case or not, I wish them luck; because the second reason I’ve been avoiding the meals lines is the people who stand in them. I don’t even know how many times I’ve either explicitly stated or strongly implied that most of us Morlocks who lurk in the subterranean stratum of living beside freeways and in projects are boors, ghouls, and thugs, but we are. And that means people doing things like flipping out on you and picking a fight with you because you had the gall to get upset over the jerk violating your personal space, burglarizing your personal conversation with a friend, and in so doing laying down a Great Wall of Smack. Bad manners, to put it kindly; sometimes they pass from atrocious to pathologically ignoble. This is why I blew up yesterday; I don’t feel comfortable around people as it is, I’m not about to when the people make a mission out of their lives to step on as many others’ toes as they can. I don’t care that it’s often unintentional; living more intentionally effectively eliminates the need to have to constantly fall back on that sorry excuse.

More galling than having had to put up with troglodytes just for some empty filler that probably would have shaved five minutes shaved off my life if I’d stuck around for further indignity, is the fact that everyone branded me as the bad guy. Sure, I could have been calm and silken-tongued, but I’ve seen time and again how the diplomatic approach is viewed as a sign of weakness to be exploited. (Legions of social workers’ attempts to civilize the lumpenprolatariat are spat upon and ridiculed by the beneficiaries of their idealism; sure, I’ll enroll in your stupid positive reframing workshop if it’ll get me some bus tickets, some grub, and maybe even housing.) Which has led me to another ugly conclusion: that most bumfeeds, most charity period, serves not only to enable and institutionalize but to encourage bad behaviors.

Opportunity Cost

Nicotine gum just isn't the same as choking honest-to-goodness blokes (a.k.a “smoking...cigs”), but it's just gonna hafta do. Because I have to quit smoking if I'm to get the surgery on my wrist done, that I've avoided for months already. Fuck me! It's been busted up since mid-December! The trick will be to get me to chew enough of the stuff, because I both dislike gum and dislike THIS particular gum.

Actually, the real trick will be for me to start and keep this new sushi restaurant job. Before even setting foot in the kitchen I know this place will be weird because the schedule I received via text earlier today was something I never expected to encounter: split shifts. I remember as a teen in Europe it was par for most hospitality workers — not just the food worker subset — to work split shifts, but it's not something I've personally experienced, or even heard of, in all the food joints I've worked here and in Seattle. lol This is what I get for bragging during the interview about striding there from home in only twenty-three minutes! Split shifts suck, unless you're working in a hotel and can nap in a spare closet or even room. I'll be working four split shifts, nine to ten hours total each day (one only six and a half); though at least the days are split apart in pairs.

It's both my wrist and my feet/legs I'm worried about. My feet and/or legs will start bothering me anywhen between five and seven hours into any given shift; but what kind of grief my wrist will give me I can't know because it depends largely on whether I'll just be dish-dogging or I chucked into the ol' meat grinder, right off the bat, washing dishes and prepping (and maybe clearing tables). Considering the schedule, I fear the latter. Let's just hope acetaminophen, extensive wrapping, and cardboard on the floor if there aren't any mats, will carry me through. Not only that, but I'll be in a cast for three to four months after the surgery, so ... well, fuck, I don't know. For all I DO know, I may not even make it this first week; also there's a fair chance the orthopedist will insist I do nothing more strenuous with my right arm during recovery than swipe my debit card.

Also known to me is how sick I am of canning, sick of looking for work, and sick of failing at work. In fact, this job feels like a disaster in the making. Well, considering how I'm starting to drastically fail at people, too, keeping this job (incentive!) will give me the lion's portion of each week to be too busy to want to give a damn about failings ... er, excepting in regard to my rapport with the (I strongly suspect) conservative Christian Korean owners, whilst withdrawing from alcohol and nicotine. Have I said “Fuck me!” yet?

The Walls Are Closing In

I woke up one morning and bumped my head against the ceiling. I don't remember when exactly this was, because every morning I'm still bruising my noggin on the damn thing. I guess what I'm saying is I've arrived at a point in my life where I feel like I'm in that trash compactor aboard the Death Star; the walls are closing in, there's nowhere to go, and the inevitable end will be messy and terrible. The only "if" seeming to factor into this grim scenario is whether my doom be protracted or not, and how agonizingly long if so.

The last couple jobs — both how screwed up they were and how I failed to keep them in spite of prior boasting that street living inoculated me to drama and bullshit — and the subsequent diminution, my return to the Square One of canning, have I guess sort of slapped me in the face. Don't tell me I can't wash dishes or assemble sammiches part-time! Mayhap street living really handicapped my capacity for Sucking It up and Driving On? Well, I have to try again, in spite of my conviction that I'll be found dead in a doorway twenty years hence. What I really mean by that bit of hyperbole is that the best I can muster will probably always fall just short of the hindrances and hazards likely to be arrayed against me by humanity and the world it doggedly devours.

To be fair, I have quit drinking at least; that awful epoch is floating downstream finally, taking on water whilst fouling the waters ahead. So long as I stay true to abstinence, even if I screw up stellarly and end up back on the streets I won't wake up every morning surrounded by piss jugs full of ochre sludge, spewing streams of Powerade out my nostrils every time I desperately try to quaff down some damage control. A small victory? I suppose I ought to be thankful that I can at least tread water now, whereas when I was drinking I was careening into the maw of Azazoth, holding dark conversations with night gaunts. Put prosaically, I'm not a functional maintenance drinker; even poor and eating crap, the quality of my life and its future prospects are logarithmically improved.

Small victories aside, it really is a pain in the ass to try to get it together only to realize you started too late: you never got to go on the great snark hunt of chasing after dreams; you completely skipped over that life chapter to the one where you're clinging white-knuckled to your remaining days by the reins of expediency...and still you're sliding down Entropy's backside, no matter how tightly you grip. See these photos? Those are of imbecile normies withholding money from the poor by locking up their recyclables. On the unhappy day working and canning are no longer viable options for me, don't think for a second I'll be BEGGING from those who deprived me of my wherewithal! Nope, I'll be stealing, and the fools won't see how they ruined a decent person by the hand of social darwinism.

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The fourth photo is of an apartment building that's getting...I'm not sure if it will be renovated or completely demolished, but regardless whatever will be inhabited in its stead will probably have its recyclables sequestered behind locks and bars. Development is also an enemy to us poor for this reason; whoever's moving up here, they seem to be bringing a siege mentality with them...Portland, a collective of gated communities? I need to get the fuck out of here!

2nd and Final Month of Phase #2

April is the month I engage in three major self-improvement projects, as part of the final stretch of Phase Two of my self-betterment itinerary. Phase Two of my self-betterment itinerary will draw to a close at the end of this month; by that time I will have not only quit drinking and smoking but also vaping, and the first changes to my lifestyle will have been initiated.

I’ve already started changing my diet for the better, though in an as yet paltry way because I my surplus funds don’t become available until toward the end of the month — after the next month’s rent and bills are paid, of course. I still eat a bunch of ramen and canned crap, but I’m starting to make my own hummus (it only costs about $2 to make about 22 ounces!), add healthy vegetables like garlic and chiles and mushrooms to my pre-fab Godawful to render the stuff actual sustenance, and eat granola for breakfast. My end goal is to decrease my caloric intake to just below the supposed ideal, rely more on vegetable than animal sources for protein, eliminate processed and simple carbohydrates from my diet, and drink nothing but teas and home-fermented brews in addition to water. Not that I’m about to go all over the top health nut: bacon and cheese are two of my four(?) pillars of flavor! Exercise is also going to be introduced into my daily routine, at least as soon as I groundscore or can afford to buy a rug; I’ve heard good things about Pilates, and there’s an app on my Google Play wish list that instructs in short intensive work-outs I plan on trying out.

Meditation is another thing I’m going to be starting … as soon as I finalize a weekly schedule where I can logically fit this in. The problem with this is that ideally both exercise and meditation are done early, before the day has a chance to darken one’s inner horizons; but canning’s the first thing I do after rolling out of bed and stuffing some hummus on toast, my pills, and a cup of strong black tea down my throat. The early bird catches the worm, and dawn occurs about 1.5 minutes earlier every day until June 21, so I’ll probably have to do both after my morning gold rush, at least if I’m to avoid getting out of bed at 5:00 AM or earlier! I’ve flirted with meditation a few times before, but honestly it’s something I’ll have to twist my arm to stick with, perhaps because I have a more restless mind than most, that easily loses interest. All the more reason to bridle the tiger, to paraphrase an oft-quoted set of parables Buddhists and Taoists have historically used to describe the cantankerous relationship between a largely subconscious-driven psyche of meandering depths and volatile energy and the ego with its crystalline lattice of superficial will and purpose.

The biggest adjustment may prove to be returning to school. I call it school, but it’s nothing more than teaching myself Android development. It will feel like going back to school, though, because I plan on making it a scheduled recurring event that follows a lesson plan and involves studying and homework. Also, because it’s programming, I’ll need to do a lot of reading up on fundamentals, such as clean coding conventions, effective use of tables and flowcharts and pseudocode to draft software designs, an understanding of algorithms and familiarity with commonly used ones, and the whole technical language featuring things such as classes and objects and parameters and fluency in use of their underlying concepts. Essentially, 100-level computer science and 200-level Java, probably totaling in material and effort required to the equivalent to taking five or six credit-hours at the local community college … only not at all. Conceivably, I could actually garner a small ancillary income from selling apps, though so far I’ve only thought up one to seriously pursue development. Whatever, coding can be tedious fun when it yields pleasing results, just like gardens.

Jurassic Wardrobe vs. Smoking Reburns

Every now and then I’ve found myself boasting about how the homeless and the poor have low carbon footprints because of low consumption and lots of re-use. However, until now that’s been an empty — if plausible — boast, because I never got around to determining just what my carbon footprint is. Well, today I decided to try out three online quizzes that estimate. I took the highest — and most consistent — two out of the three results to estimate my carbon footprint to be about 5.3 tons/year out of an average American household figure of 9.4 tons/year, putting me at about 56% or more earth-friendly than about half of my neighbors. Predictably, where the greatest gains are made in my (mostly unintentional) eco-stewardship are in frivolous consumerism; my carbon footprint was probably considerably lower when I was sleeping on a loading dock.

But, this is only a very rough estimate based on self-reporting in online quizzes. One question that immediately springs to mind is … what about the fact that most of what I purchase is made in China, and other developing nations with lax environmental regulations? Alas, I can’t find any actual figures, but it stands to reason that Chinese steel that utilizes cruder manufacturing processes that aren’t nearly as beholden to environmental regulations as say, German steel, yields greater emissions in production. I shop at the Dollar Tree and Amazon, so unless I’m splurging or stumbling upon crazy deals I’m buying at best American steel (whose production carbon footprint is lamentably close to China’s). Not that I’m worried that all my virtuous re-using and recycling is being thwarted by relying mostly on shoddy Chinese goods; I seriously doubt the fraction of China-origin purchases of mine is significantly greater than is that of the middle class denizens above me on the societal food chain.

It’s good to think about, though. Which most people don’t, even those silly yuppies who present themselves as eco-groovy and make a show of chatting up the sexy little Sierra Club corporate panhandlers during lunch. If they did think about it, would they feel so comfortable strutting down the street in bedecked in hundreds of dollars of Carboniferous era? Or, for that matter, those boorish blue-collar suburbanites who burn yard debris and illegally dump appliances alongside roads? Or every one of us who don’t use rechargeable batteries and think nothing of throwing them out in the trash when they’re spent? I can use less water, I can eat less processed foods and beef, and I can get a bike and take the bus less; hell, I’m sitting here in front of a computer typing out this blog post, when I could be outside gardening or taking photos of blossoming cherry trees!

Community Garden Plot

One nice thing about passing out early with your face in a book is you wake up early the next day ... and suddenly transitioning from lights out at 3:00 AM to out of bed at 6:00 AM is less a problem. Made an occasion of rousing myself to the sound of waking crows perched outside in the Park Blocks: threw some soap in the tub with me, along with a (dull as FUCK!) razor and a mirror. I even made it to the community garden get-together, after some considerable initial balking; I think what made my mind up was a combination of being sick of sitting around in or walking around in the same boring places and wanting to see if there may be a cutie or two among my fellow gardeners to creep on.

As you can see in the picture … just where in fuck IS my garden plot? It’s there in the middle of the photograph; lol I’m just going to have to get some stakes and twine, at least until I can get my hands on some boards to make a slightly raised bed with. Looks like I’ll be getting a bit of shade from the south, also early shady afternoons and evenings, so I may need to rethink the basil I wanted earlier to try. Including a path, I have room for four ten-foot rows, which means beets and some other stuff. I don’t care yet: first I need to weed the plot and demarcate it, then I need to bolster the soil with compost and mulch — maybe even some peat moss or landscaping gravel — before I worry about planting anything. I really like the neighborhood the garden’s in, so it will be a welcome sanctuary from the boorish Bedlam down here once the dog days of summer settle over us.

But, wait! How am I going to afford all this, being unemployed? The community garden comes with a shed housing various tools, stuff like burlap sacks and compost or wood chips get donated to us periodically throughout the year, seeds are cheap, and there’s sacks of landscaping gravel all over the place waiting for adventures in petty larceny — what with everyone moving here, construction is happening every few blocks. Besides, with deposits going up to 10¢ next month I’ll only need to collect 117 cans and bottles a day to bring in $350 a month, which is enough to get by and even enjoy a modest lifestyle of board games, kimchi, Android development, and ganja … and to keep up on a job search that will hopefully see me employed part-time again before fall.

SALT III Summit 2017

It looks like I may either lose my job or end up looking for another one and moving on as soon as is practical. I blew up on Lobstrocity — fortunately mostly via text after work — Caturday, after a minor chiding by her rubbed the scab off a festering grudge during the peak of an hours-long insanity rush that was knocking all of our dicks in the dirt. I called her out on her abberant psychology with my typically sharp-tongued contempt, so she's roasting me over coals in her heart. I guess I didn't get over her weeks of oppressive bipolar passive-aggressive cunt emanations, even after she apologized that Friday before I bashed my face on the stairwell.

Well, I'll find out tomorrow at 3:30 PM. I need this damn job, so I'll do my best to gracefully navigate the political landscape of the scheduled owner-moderated peace talks. Whether or not the Lobstrocity is sincere in her own overtures and whether or not I find myself in petty machination crosshairs afterward...I don't care. I'm just going to be a co-worker: do an above-average job and keep to myself, refrain from small miscreance, and probably look for work elsewhere in a couple months or as soon as I smell trouble. No more Amazon shopping sprees, alas; time to save up. Shit! Do I have a dental appointment tomorrow? *phew* Nope, not til Thursday.

Fucking work politics. I suck at the interpersonal bullshit, save for limited intervals of widely interspersed charm: I despise my fellow humans, and even when I get along with them or deign to relate to them I'm looking for a reason to toss homeskillet off the cliff (in general, even, I hate both noisy crowds and intimate familiarity). Lobstrocity sucks at it, too, albeit somewhat differently. The Marquessa does, too, but way differently and in a way I don't really get. This is the restaurant business for you...lol in a nutshell. It would be easier for me if I worked with different people (e.g. D— keeps to herself!), also on days I don't have to go out front much.

Better Living through Chemistry

It's weird for it not to be weird, not to drink. Started taking Naltrexone the Thursday before last, and since then I've not only not drank any alcohol but I've not even craved it; I'm gradually startting to think about it less, too. No need for me to ponder at never having heard of it all those times in and out of treatment — I doubt a third of the counselors and case workers and acupuncturists etc. would do well in food service lol. It's a major relief, actually, because when I initially planned on quitting on Ash Wednesday I was worried about how I'd manage; I despise 12-step programs and meetings, also the heavily New Age-influenced counseling and relapse prevention...both of which saturate the whole treatment and recovery industry. It really is an industry.

This is Phase Two, of I guess what can be called Project: Corwin Getting His Shit Together. This is the physical health one, where I quit drinking, then quit smoking cigarettes (or at least temporarily switch to vaping), then start to exercise and improve my diet. Phase One was getting and keeping the job, which aside from one fit I threw whilst severly injured and due to the damn spray gun exploding into catastrophic uselessness I've done beyond spectacularly; in fact, I'd be cooking right now were it not for the injury (well, one of them). Phase Three is something I haven't quite solidified in my mind yet, but I vaguely describe as “getting a life”, as in a life enriched by edifying people and activities.

“Getting a life”, at least a social life, will prove to be daunting. Alas, aside from when I was in college for a few years, most of my adult social orientation and skills have been informed by alcohol and drug abuse, couch crashing and loading overpass trolling, jail and treatment war story circles and chess clubs...and, well, you get the idea. Letting me into your home would be much like letting in a cat off the street, a charming — if rogueish and skittish — fellow that once was a household cat but has since then gone through some serious shit. As for the hobbies and activities, I already have a community garden plot waiting for me, and since I earn money now I can do things like buy board games or a Dremel or even stuff to make soap with — the most difficult part will me getting off my ass, which will become easy as I grow increasingly restless and bored from no longer sousing myself with bad company.

Speaking of money: it's CRAZY how much I spent on booze! I probably averaged $7.50 to $8.00 a day, which averaged out adds up to over $230 a month. Visualizing how much paté and brie that can put into my face fills me with revulsion at the bilge water I wasted that money on. That's why I cavalierly dismissed my Moon Goddess's objections to me spending money on our (awesome!) Mexican lunch last week: it was paid for by three days of not quaffing crap. I could probably benefit from quitting smoking weed, too, but I only spend $40 to $45 a month on that stuff; it's the difference between a cheap DVD player and a cheap bike. Besides, eventually I'll probably go medical and CBD, and just recreationally ingest THC every so often on special occasions. Regardless, no longer drinking is a also financial boon.

Donald Trump and the End of the World

I realized a few things while I was over at an acquaintance's a couple nights ago, watching BBC and CNN news on her projector (after she'd gotten tired of playing Goat Simulator lol). She and her girlfriend were bristling in indignation at Trump's temporary travel ban, which I merely felt to be yet another foreign policy disaster — par for the course — and an excellent opportunity to test whether or not the decades-long expansion of executive power can withstand a check from the judicial branch of the federal government. So impassioned are both the support for and opposition to our new president, yet I wonder how much of either is rational.

There's certainly much to dislike about the guy: he's a loathesome boor, he was never all that great a businessman, and he's already indicated early on he's grandiose and reckless. And that's not even mentioning his politics: he certainly SEEMS to be racist and misogynistic like most Good Ol' White Boys, his cabinet is a nightmare of inexperience and conflicts of interest (i.e. croneys, or goombas), his immigration and trade sword-rattling are both potentially calamitous, and we less fortunate Americans are fearful of ending up sleeping in shelters and doorways. However, for all that, I emotionally view the guy as the hyperbolic logical conclusion to the American cultural and political trajectory; viewed in that light, it's unlikely he'll get much worse than the likes of Clinton and Bush Jr., or even Nixon.

Does this make me a centrist, cut off by the raging seas of partisan extremism from other like-minded realists like the smaller islands of the Japanaese archipeligo on a bad summer day? As far as immigration goes, I honestly believe that nobody should be allowed into the country who isn't willing to learn English, who won't serve a purpose here, and who would deprive a citizen of a means to make a living. Nor would I mind seeing a trade war against China, as bad as that could get; I'm sick to death of how globalism has reduced blue-collar American workers to pathetic wage slaves. But, as for the travel ban, that's total bullshit: gun-slinging emo American high school kids are more of a threat to our nation's security than are foreigners who underwent months of scrutiny and background checks.

So, yeah, I'm not dogmatically left enough to just hate the guy and want to get all theatrically Thomas Paine on the Establisment because Trump got elected. Besides, I HATE Hillary Clinton! Her husband deregulated more, free-traded more, cut more welfare, and got tougher on crime than most Republicans have within my lifetime — and she's AT LEAST as scary a neo-liberal global elitist as he is. It was a rotten choice to begin with, indicating arrival at the point of critical failure for our campaign and election system. Trump didn't get voted in because most Americans are backwater bozos, but because roughly half of the voting country didn't want another career politician in office.

And, already such a bizarre forty-fifth presidency! I've never seen anything like this scenario spilling out of the White House like metal folding chairs cascading out of a semi hurtling down the freeway, nor can I recall having read anything similar going on during prior presidencies. We the people have grown so stupid, lazy, and selfish ... and, boy howdy, does it show! So much so, that I can only wonder how small-minded or deliberately vapid an American will have to be in 2020 to remain clueless. This could be the wake-up call we political borderland fringe elements have been muttering darkly about forever; but I can just as easily see this being the outside edge of the whirlpool that drags us down into ... Mad Max!

Along the Banks of Cocytus

Winter storm Jupiter* arrived Tuesday afternoon, dumping anywhere between four and fifteen inches of snow on Portland — the most we've had since 1980, which I only very vaguely recall — and still the city is coated in a thick patina of compacted snow and ice. As expected, I lost the first of my newly-acquired Wednesdays (from the other dishwasher); the fourth day this winter has cost me, or about half a paycheck. That's too much money to lose because my city government would rather blow money on useless gimmicky kitsch catered to tourists and monied out-of-staters (e.g. green-demarcated bike lanes and crossings and ugly modern art sculptures at streetcar stops) than invest it in our ailing infrastructure and plan contingently for the future possibility of hotter summers and colder winters.

It hasn't snowed in three days, yet even with a state of emergency declared I'm still watching people struggle to stay upright as they navigate treacherous sidewalks, doggedly insisting on going about their lives. WHY aren't there people sanding and shoveling the sidewalks? It's actually the law for owners of properties to clear adjacent sidewalks — enough of a law that anyone who falls and injures himself can sue the property owner! Unfortunately, the city of Portland doesn't stipulate any time requirements for sidewalks to be cleared, and the bureau of transportation doesn't enforce the law because it “...encourage[s] the public to be ... civic-minded about this.” Which sounds about as useful a statute as one stipulating that rapists be convicted and incarcerated ONLY if they turn themselves in and willingly confess. Considering how this stuff isn't expected to start thawing until Monday night or early Tuesday morning, this means a total of five days will have passed wherein we've all been effectively entombed in ice like hapless Ötzi, all because our city government is inept and in the pockets of ex-pat Californians and Chinese tourists, our local businesses care only for the letter of the law, and locals who unceasingly congratulate themselves on their gentility and sense of community involvement are in fact not even situationally civic-minded.

This is the last straw for me, as far as putting up with this city's bullshit is concerned. I'm waiting for a reply email from city hall, scheduling me for a three minute slot to testify before the city council. I'm going to demand that the law be changed to require sidewalks to be cleared of snow and ice within four hours of first snowfall (like in the neighboring city of Beaverton) AND be vigorously enforced — including an option for citizens to report violations to city hall so that non-compliant property owners may be fined — and suggest that in future such instances the city employ rapid-response emergency work crews drafted from jails and hired from local homeless shelters and day centers to keep the sidewalks clear in parts of the city where significant commerce is conducted and high concentrations of elderly and mobility-impaired residents live.

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* Who names these storms, anyway? Anyone with any sense knows Sailor Mars is the REAL bombshell.

Mountain Climbing

It's not enough to get into housing and return to work, insofar as getting my shit together is concerned. Everything has to change: drinking, sleeping, diet, hygiene, handling money, even how I choose to amuse myself and with whom. It's tantamount to somehow yanking yourself up in the air by your ankles and upending yourself, or at least that's how it feels; impossible and distressing in its beyond-awkwardness. Of course, on paper anything can look pretty understandable and doable — which is why I'm going to keep this self-improvement inventory at home in my spiral notebook — but without a life coach or gut-wrenching resolve the inertia of even flagrantly self-destructive habits can mock and weary like a winter stroll through the Alps.

The reason I say this, is that I seem to have found myself a job that inclines toward nursing dysfunctionality. I wouldn't have too hard a time muddling through half of the rest of my life sauced, not even if I were to eventually become a full-time cook or production baker. Not that all restaurants are wagon circles manned by haggard survivors of a daily bacchanalian Bataan Death March, but many are and this one certainly is. To illustrate: yesterday evening I visited the Maquessa's (the cook I usually work with) apartment and proceeded to stuff my face with spaghetti and a bottle of wine. But, I really shouldn't be doing that; nor is it wise for me to get so cozy with my co-workers, I imagine — another thing that happens a lot in restaurants, usually resulting in petty but nonetheless unnecessary and disruptive calamity.

My guess is I'll be doing my squats and brushing and flossing daily long before I successfully Magellan my way through all the drunks, boors, and freaks to an edifying millieu. As good as I am at amusing myself and being by myself, even I get bored and lonely; and, unfortunately, when you find yourself in the loser class of society only losers are attracted to you and want to spend time with you — in my case it feels like I'm stuck with either drunks or twelve-step cultists, neither of which have much to offer me. Ultimately, though, it's best to remember that no company is better than bad company. A hard cirriculum to stick with, one that many balk at.