Multnomah Safe Rest Village

Sometimes raising hell works.

I now live at the Multnomah Safe Rest Village, in a plastic shack that's actually big enough for me to not just sleep in but also park my bike in and even cook simple meals in with my hot plate and rice cooker. I raised a lot of hell getting here, some of which was straight up me being ineffectually mental on the phone … but a (♥️ OMFG super gorgeous!) KGW news reporter decided to help me after I emailed her; she even put me on TV! Which, by the way, I found utterly terrifying. Resulting from that, some street social worker-ish chick and a weirdly eager fire fighter met with me and offered me a berth here, and then whisked me out of Northwest Portland in a cab (this safe rest village is way out in the hills in Southwest Portland).

I didn't know what to expect, but all in all I'm pleased with the change. I can lock the door, I can turn the heat up, and I can stay up and sleep in; I can shower, I can even cook stuff on a nice propane grill if I feel like it. A couple of my neighbors even watched a football game earlier in a covered common area with a projector. I even have a cute little Chinese crab apple tree in front of my shack, along with a little emergency rain shelter I cobbled together for my neighbors' cats out of a chair, collapsible poles, Gorilla™ tape, a garbage bag and a couple shirts. Sometimes it gets kinda noisy at odd times here, but for the most part it's peaceful and drama-free … which is significant because we all engage in some form of substance use.

This is so much better than those crappy HAP housing projects (I've "lived" in three of them, also a Central City Concern housing building — I know whereof I speak)! I'd rather stay here than move into a fucking welfare silo full of shithead neighbors and mismanaged by villainous slumlords. More facilities such as these should be erected, specifically by community gardens adjacent to city parks, perhaps also incorporating feral cat colonies to give us opportunities to be purposeful and busy. Far's I'm concerned subsidized housing's just a taxpayer boondoggle that harms the physical and mental well-being of the poor while benefiting career bureaucrats and corporate grifters.

A World Full of Bullshit

If there's one thing that happens to you after living on the streets for a while, is you just get so sick and tired of everyone's bullshit.

Well, I am. Nobody's normal out here, and hardly any of them are even agreeable to me because they're too crazy, too creepy or thuggish, too strung out on dope, or are just run-of-the-mill boorish louts. And, the longer you live out here the worse you and everyone around you gets: the constant stress, all the idiotic drama, and the oppressive weight of the stigma we all bear chisel away at the character we each possess that specifically pertains to engagement with the social contract — in my case, I just don't care anymore about playing nice with the neighborhood Yuppies that ignorantly despise me and seek to criminalize me and shove me in a ghetto where they can't see it's all just a little Dutch boy's fingers stuck in the crumbling dyke of the American Dream. I even only minimally interact with my peers now, because as far as I'm concerned, they're each of them some combination of bore, annoyance, competition, and threat (besides I really can't relate to members of younger generations or hard drug users).

So, I pretty much just stick to myself, at present desperately trying to find ways to occupy my time more constructively (and economically!) than meandering from perch to perch throughout the neighborhood drinking crappy beer. It's pretty boring and lonesome right now, but it won't last too much longer. As much as I dislike it, I'm going to resume canning, because I'm unemployed and have WAY TOO MUCH TIME on my hands. I'm also going to set up a few weekly litter pick-up crews next month, when I can afford the necessary supplies, though I won't lift a finger to clean up Yuppieland — all my good citizenry will be applied to the nearby industrial neighborhood. I'd also like to volunteer at a local food pantry, but I'm having a hard time getting a hold of the one person at the one place who would probably let me work there even though I have an active arrest warrant; I may just have to show up in person. As for whether or not return to work in the near future, I doubt it: my storage unit access hours make me available only a limited time during the day, also there's the matter of the stupid warrant. Hell, maybe eventually I'll start a couple weekly game sessions of some kind?

Ugh. Whatever the case may be, it's all bullshit. Even when you manage to insulate yourself from it as best as you can, it still hovers around you like the odor of a nasty crap in those cheaper doggie poo bags made from porous plastic. And it affects you, no matter what preventative measures you take. lol Not only that, but you get more and more full of shit yourself as time passes.

Die Yuppie Scum!!!

I'd really like to know just what's wrong with the pyschopathic people of Portland, who have chosen to scapegoat and wage an outright war against us homeless.

I resent the hell out of it, because it feels like I'm being demeaned and pushed around by a garrisoned foreign army; most of the people who have any authority or advantage over anyone else in Portland are from out of state — most of them from California. The same people who gentrified my city into a chichi strip mall for privileged Dilberts I can no longer afford to live in are now indiscriminately criminalizing me merely because I'm unemployable in mainstream work environments and am unable to afford to pay rent even in the dingiest of slumlord hovels. Sure, a lot of us on the streets are engaged in thefts and vandalism, end up starting fires that sometimes spread to neighboring properties, and even some among us are legitimately dangerous thugs … but, aren't we progressives supposed to punish actual REAL crimes, instead of manufacturing criminals like they do in benighted states like Florida and Texas?

For example: the police were called on me yesterday evening because I yelled at some jackass Yuppie for driving the wrong way down a street in the bike lane and then parking in the bike lane. In a city where the police shortage and related problems are so bad that police seldom arrive within an hour, 911 calls are on hold for the better part of an hour and ambulances sometimes don't even show up, a sniveling Yuppie twat who felt "threatened" managed to get her state-sanctioned goon squad sicced on me (no doubt at the expense of responding to a REAL crime somewhere else!) … whereas the owner of the strip club I help out at couldn't get the police to show up at a protest in which the picketers were trespassing on the property, aggressively harassing dancers and customers, and even blocking a couple of the doors! What fucking bullshit is this!?

What makes it worse is that there's simply hardly anywhere left where a homeless person can go and be left in peace. It used to be that we lived in separate worlds: they went to work in offices downtown during the day and hung out at home in the evening to watch TV while we hung out in the more obscure corners of parks or beneath freeway overpases or alongside railroad tracks, and we basically avoided each otehr and left each other alone. But, gentrification is filling in the formerly industrial wastelands and the professional class is now mostly "working" from home, so even when I'm sitting on my loading dock in industrial Northwest Portland I regularly have to put up with Yuppies jogging or walking their dogs past me. It's gotten even worse lately: these Yuppie assholes have chosen to embrace a beligerent classist territorialism whereby they actually go out of their way to make us feel uncomfortable and unwelcome by conspicuously injecting their presence into where we "live" and hang out in a chickenshit passive-aggressive psychological operations terorist campaign against us.

I've decided I hate what we homeless call housies or I call normies (I call my homeless peers homies, though not always in the spirit of camaraderie because many of us misguidedly prey upon each other), that I will NEVER forgive them for this persecution of theirs and that I'm not going to play nice with them or be an ambassador to them. They're despicable ignoramuses and narcissists who embrace a corproate consumer caste heirarchy while fooling themselves into thinking they're decent, thoughtful people because they drink wine, donate to charity, and constantly blow virtue smoke signals up each other's asses in an infobubble that resembles a guarded gated community more than it does anything like a liberal forum.

I can't wait until I get my silk screening kit and start printing out t-shirts. I'll have a lot of ugly things to say about the assholes who torment me and my pers.

Friendly House = Wingnut House

I'm seriously reconsidering my membership and engagement with the Friendly House community center.

It was supposed to be a boon, a place where I could shower, sit down and enjoy some unhealthy but sustaining food, and use the computers. But, it seems like I'm just too damn sensitive to boorish, noisy, wingnut behaviors by other members to spend any appreciable time in this place. For example: this morning T— got pissy when I objected to having to listen to his obnoxious video he was playing out loud on his phone for everyone to hear (we're all supposed to be using head phones r ear buds when doing that sort of thing), then some fucking crazy fool sat across from me looking in my direction with his ridiculous sunglasses on talking to himself and accused me of being crazy and sharting shit when I asked him if he was talking to me. It just seems like yet another typically Portland institution, where the lunatic inmates have completely overrun the asylum; I've experienced this problem with Transition Projects and with Central Cty Concern, and the result is always the same — introverted and well-behaved people like me who are sensitive to chaos and noise get alienated and effectively shut out because deference is given to flamboyantly crazy people or cartoonishly animated dope fiends.

The lame thing about it is this kind of bullshit not only goes cntrary to the mission statement of the social services and community centers but is the result of selective enforcement of rules. It's blatant hypocrisy and discrimination, carried out by woke virtue-signaling assholes.

I'm very probably going to withdraw my membership from the Friendly House after I move all of my stuff out of my locker and figure out another place to charge my electronics and shower. Then I'll insist on a pro-rated refund of my membership and locker fees, or I'll complan to the Better Business Bureau, the Department of Justice: Consumer Protection Section, the local neighborhood paper, and possibly even hire an attorney when I get "paid" nexty month to sue the place for the money plus legal fees and emotional damages. I'll talk to the director of the community center first, but I have no faith in improvement, especially considerin how she's ignored my email complaints for a couple weeks.

Two More Bikes Yet Nowhere to Paint

I received an old Univega ten-speed yesterday when I was doing laundry; I think it's from the early 80s but it can be difficult to look that sort of thing up sometimes…now that Google has polluted the Internet with mostly useless, pornograhpic, hate-filled, parasitically profiteering or delusional garbage.

It was super sweet of the girl, who told me used to ride the thing up the nightmare hill going to Lewis and Clark College. But, now I'm left with a conundrum: how in hell am I going to strip and paint all the frames I have? I just ordered a 1990 Trek Singletrack 950, which means once it arrives I'll have two complete bikes and SIX full framesets (one missing a headset), three of them desperately needing to be repainted and one of them probably benefitting from a complete repaint. I need to get these damn things painted and built, and either donated or sold, not just to make room in my storage unit but to give me something more productive to do than grit my teeth at my weirdo peers in the Friendly House or drinking crappy beers in public. I just spent a couple hours on Google Maps and on the phone looking for places I can rent for the purpose, but the cheapest workspace I could find that would let me do this costs $350/month (with a $525 deposit)—it just wouldn't be worth it. I'm just going to have to find a way to become situationally extroverted and civil enough to find someone willing to let me use a garage or whatever for the purpose.

I hate to say it, but alongside my inability to prepare and safely store food, this is another reason I refgret having lost my housing. I still don't miss the poverty pimps, the slumlords, and the shitty part of town and lame-ass neighbors, but I'm definitely having a hard finding ways to work around the lack of kitchen and workshop facilities.

So Much for Working Part-Time

Well, hell, it looks like the Social Security administration was correct in its assesment of me being unemployable...or at least I think that's why they granted me my disability status.

I've tried and failed repeatedly to get a part-time food service job, mostly just to give me something more constructive and engaging to do with my time than drinking beer; for some reason I just either can't get a job or keep it when I get one. I've alienated employers by being snarky about their hiring processes and requiremnets, I've outright called out a business for wasting my time because it didn't have its shit together, and I've blown off interviews and flaked out on first shifts at least a dozen times. I guess I really am just too mental to put up with that obnoxious corporate Dilbert "culture" that's crept into every corner of society (when was the last time you said "moving forward" in a casiual conversation?), or to even work with anyone else. Don't get me wrong: I like work, but jobs and other people just plain suck — and even when you find something that doesn't dehumanize you or suck your soul or destroy your body in other ways it still won't pay enough to provide you with a modestly comfortable and secure life (you have to work about seventy-five hours a week at minimum wage here in Portland to afford to live properly, which includes saving for retirement). And this isn't just a problem for service and blue collar workers: even well-paid professionals end up giving up too much of their time to The Man and can't enjoy their pseudo-posh lives without constantly juggling debts.

So, I'm no longer lookling for work. I'll just resume canning starting Saturday, May 20, though non-competitively because I collect disability benefits and don't feel right depriving my less-fortunate peers their means of income. I'm also going to start looking for places to volunteer at, probably at the Friendly House and LiftUp PDX, maybe also join some Solve litter pick-up crews. Gotta do something, right? lol Especially when the beer no longer appeals.

Settled In (for Now)

So, I've spent exactly three weeks out here since I left that awful housing project downtown, and all things considered I'm doing remarkably well given the circumstances; I managed to land on my feet instead of on my ass.

I've settled on a loading dock near the freeway confluence in Northwest Portland, with my foxhle buddy R— who fled that failed camping experiment beside the freeway shortly after I did. The company that owns this property has allowed the homeless to sleep on its loading dock for as long as I can remember: the rules are simply 1) GTFO by around 6:30 AM (except on Sundays, when we can sleep in and loiter all day) and 2) don't mess the place up. We're the only guys living there; occasionally some random stranger overnights down at the other end, but other than that the place is ours. Nobody wants to join us because today's homeless are dysfunctonal dopers and nutters who insist on erecting permanent structures — there's a small compound of such structures across the street and down the block from us. As you can see from the photo, thanks to my disability benefits I'm well provisioned with a cot, an air mattress, a sleeping bag, and a pillow (R— sleeps on a sleeping bag on a foam mat inside a two-person tent). It gets a little noisy at times, and last night it got kind of sketchy when some guy in the compound down the street busted his car horn and screamed threats at us for an hour, but for the most part it's alright and once I get my peper ball projectile pistols to add to my stun baton I feel reasonably confident I can deter or defend myself against most assailants. One worry of mine is that eventually the streets will get more dangerous after the homeless have been herded into the city's mas encampments, because the only ones out here will be those who can't behave well enough to stay in shelters or camp sites or be housed.

Not only that, but I'm going to start washing dishes at a nearby Mexican restaurant on Friday, working fridays and saturdays mid-shifts. I'll only be working fifteen to sixteen hours a week, but I'll need to take extra care not to let myself get victimized by Morlock zombies or let myself get stupid and drunk or sleep deprived. In fact, I may need to use one or two spots in the neighborhood for daytime napping to ensure I can adequately perform on the job. Whatever it takes. I hope it works out for me! Figuring out taxes earning income from work while collecting disability benefits will be educational.

Failed Camping Experiment

So, I've been out here for two weeks, and I'm starting to acclimate to my situation just as the weather is finally warming up and drying out. Not only that, but I'll have my disability the morning after tomorow. A lot has happened since I last posted:

I moved from my spot near the old Esco to spend a couple nights on a loading dock closer to my storage unit, after which I let myself get convinced to borrow an acquaintance's moldy four-man tent and move next to the freeway in the Pearl District. I've never done the permanent-tent thing and after three nights of it I've already decided to move to a loading dock as soon as I receive homless camping supplies from Amazon. As nice as it is to be around trustworthy acquaintances and to be able to sleep in, the cons BY FAR outweigh the pros: I'm right next to a freeway with its noise and pollution, the ground we're camping on is gross from the previous occupants who sullied the site with fires and trash, it's in the Pearl District and closer to downtown so there's less privacy and more sketchy passers-by, I'm regularly getting sidelong glances and outright hostile and disgusted stares because of the stigma against homeless camps, I'm closer to downtown, I'm farther from both the Friendly House and the storage unit I use daily, and because I'm on public property I anticipate we'll get evicted regardless how clean we keep the camp and how positive our relationship is with our housed neighbors. Besides, the "leader" of the camp gets a bit pushy and bossy, so it will probably be better for our acquaintanceship that I leave before I get angry about it.

Okay, I'm DEFINITELY moving back to the loading dock tonight. The "leader" of our camp just decided I need to move my tent to make room for another member of the camp...but on both sides of my tent the ground is too lumpy for me to slep comfortably on without an air mattress I don't have. I like the guy, don't get me wrong; I like not being pushed around a lot more — if I wanted people bossing me around I'd sleep at a fucking shelter. Besides, I'm looking for work, so eventually I'll be dealing with that for a good reason (for money)...well, at least I hope I will.

Frontier Justice

Last night was CRAZY!

At around 2300 some black dude in a whelchair rolled up to one of my neighbor's tents and started ransacking it after confirming it was empty. Of course when the occupants returned I totally told them what happened and described the culprit to them, because anyone who steals from the homeless is a planet-sized pile of shit. The fool returned to the scene of the crime at around 0800 asking them if they found a gray cell phone, and almost got stabbed with a survival knife and beheaded with an axe by the couple he robbed! Savage, but it's pretty much frontier justice out here on the streets: we don't have police protection or the means to criminally charge or litigate in the courts — cops and judges are our enemies, for the most part, because American society despises the mentally distressed and impoverished desperate citizens it creates. Of course, I found it all viscerally disturbing and barbaric, but I also get it; people need to realize all the undersirable and disturbing or destructive traits and behaviors of human beings are usually appropriate within their social context — the passive-aggressive complaining and lawsuits of Yuppies will just get you laughed out of the neighborhood or worse when you're homeless.

On a positive note, I got to see a bat fly overhead just a few feet above me around midnight. Bats fly around me every night because the old Esco property has been cleaned up and turned into an empty grassy lot with a drainage pond on one side, so there's a lot fo juicy bugs for them to eat. Yes, I love bats.

Evicted from Housing!

I left my housing at the Fountain Place Tuesday, after having lived in my old renovated Fountain Place building for only just over six months. Now I'm sleeping in a makeshift modular lean-to made of tarps and a sleeping bag and air mattress carabinered to a fence next to the old Esco property in Northwest Portland.

I guess I just stubbornly decided to be an asshole to Home Forward and to Pinehurst Property Management, knowing it would undo me. I could have been diploamtic in my complaints and criticisms, but I consider it inappropriate to kiss the hand that slaps you, and I firmly believe those who hold the cards in American society slap our faces constantly in underhanded softly spoken ways (just spend enough time talking to Amazon customer service reps on the phone!). I also consider it important for us to rise up against those in power and their underlings who wield authority over us and stand up for ourselves, even if it results in calamity; being convenience-obsessed narcissistic cowards has enslaved us to predatory Big Business and to a corrupt and dysfunctional not-all-that-democratic government, while simultaneously empowering all the devils of our natures into becoming belligerent, deluded, violent Stasi informants. Being a nice guy and having good manners and treating others with civility has nothing to do with sticking it to The Man, whomever that person may be for each of us (for me it was the local housing authority and their property management contractors).

Besides, why should I have been sweet on the povery pimps and their slumlords? I was thrown out for talking shit and being a jerk, but as I type there's punk kids in unit #403 disturbing their neighbors with fights and loud music on a daily basis, and I know for a fact there's at least two highly active drug dealers in the building. Kicking me out was an act of spiteful revenge, not a calculated response to a threat to the property or to my neighbors' physical and mental well-being. Not only that, but the construction company in charge of the Fountain Place renovation abandoned the project before it was complete! There's gaps between the floors and the walls, also the walls and the ceilings, throughout the building; there's exposed wiring visible here and there; the fountan and the entrance marquee were never replaced like they were supposed to (because it's now on the historical registry); the courtyard is still hazardous to walk on when wet; and the back entrance is full of street-trash dopers and freaks whenever it gets dark out, making it unsafge to use half the day. I had a feeling I would be disapointed or worse when I returned: this is what I waited three years to return to!? The entire time I lived there I felt like a squatter instead of a dweller.

lol Of course I got completely soaked my first night outside! I was smart and paid for a public storage unit (no way I'm going to lose all my bike frames, parts, and tools!) and Friendly House membership and one of the lockers at the community center...but I was pretty dumb and got wasted with Gino that night and failed to properly batten down my lean-to hatches. Were it not for the public strage unit I wouldn't have been able to dry out my sleeping bag, also were it not for my Friendly House membership I wouldn't have ben able to shower and change into dry clothing and warm up to a hot cup of tea. Alas, I'm going to be broke until I receive my SSI on the 27th, so I won't have many opportunities to repeat my folly...though, really, I'm getting tired of drinking. One thing I must say, however, is that I lucked out and have a couple "neighbors" I don't have to worry about; one of them even has this crazy cool shaggy dog that's a mix of Pomeranian, si tsu, and Chihuaha.

Still, it gets awfully boring out here! And, thanks to being both homeless and disabled collecting SSI I have no idea when I'll be able to return to work part-time. I'm going to have to start volunteering, if I'm to engage in life a little more fully than just siting at the Friendly House all day eating Chef Boyardee and putzing around on the computers waiting for my electronics to charge.

Year in Review

It's been a year of this pandemic bullshit, and boy am I ready for King Gidorah to lay glorious waste to this sorry world!

Americans are stupid; in fact they're vastly more retarded than I in my most cynical imaginings prior to this pandemic darkly divined … and they're savagely vicious about being idiots, too! On the right you've got conspiracist redneck domestic terrorists who hate minorities and women and just can't bear the thought of a society that's not a vampire-capitalist Jacob's ladder whose pinnacle spews torrents of shit down on the hapless, and on the left you've got militant New Age social engineers perverting children according to politicized "science" in a vile Brave New World Order Project Artichike experiment while calling every white guy who doesn't meekly toe the line of racial self-loathing a racist. I can't talk to ANY of these people anymore! When they're not calling me a communist snowflake or a trans-phobic white supremacist they're spouting nothing but soundbite-sized memes and inane call-center peudologisms that contribute less to meaningful rapport than the juvenile discourse markers I used to torment my aunt. The weird thing about it is everyone's equivalently moronic and bellicose; it's got nothing to do with educational and cultural background.

And, of course the pandemic's still around and getting people sick and killing them, though not nearly enough to be an effective herd thinner even if it's dire enough to destroy my service economy. There are vaccines available, and now that we have a real president they're getting produced and distributed in earnest … but with the emergence of dangerous mutations I've pretty much planned on wearing face coverings in public for the rest of my life, and I've little doubt business and government will be restricted or shuttered for most of the next couple years. Who knows when I'll actually settle the harassment charge against me and be guilty or innocent … I don't even care which! (It's this pending litigation that's why I'm picking up bottles and cans instead of delivering for Über Eats.) I've even started filing for social security benefits because of this weenie plague — not only will my service industry economy likely not fully recover, but do I even want to work with my fellow Americans? (I swear, sometimes I think my citizen peers are worse for my mental health than my elected government is!)

Speaking of the pandemic and stupid Americans, I think I've written over a hundred and twenty grievances against neighbors, their guests, and trespassers in my building for not wearing face coverings in the common areas. Welcome to the freedom-loving land of responsible people! My neighbors are so loathesomely ignorant and self-centered, I wear a respirator whenever I leave my apartment now … though of course I take it off when I venture far enough to get away from Yuppie joggers. To be expected from living in a slumlord-mismanaged insane asylum, though word has it I and my fellow former neighbors will be moving back home to the Fountain Place in September or October. I can't wait! As much as I dislike living downtown, that building was a lot better than this place, plus I wasn't completely surrounded by Cali-elite techtards. I just hope I'm not fucked with again by property management because of being under pending litigation, to the point where instead of returning home I end up homeless again! In anticipation of a re-ocurrance of the relocation nightmare I faced when being temporarily moved here I fired an opening communication salvo at Home Forward workers and the regional Housing and Urban Development office in Seattle. I'm not getting the boot without a fight, even if it gives me a stroke and lands me in jail.

Conclusion: these past 370+ days can totally fuck off. Though one interesting development in this pandemic/dislocation experience of mine is that instead of catching ill from the coronavirus I got sick from mono and a nasty staph infection. This occurred over a month ago, and I'm still fatigued and the right side of my face is stiff and there's still faint red blotches on my head. It's funny, because I'm just as much an isolated misanthrope today as I was thirty years ago — staph is pretty easy to get, but I've no idea where the mono came from.

Coronavirus Shit List

It's been almost eight months since the governor declared the pandemic a state of emergency, and since then the failed-state governmental response to the crisis and the antics of a culturally balkanized morass of plague-impassioned buffoons have inspired in me the urge to compile a nice little shit list:

Bike Farm & Bike Shops
Bike Farm is a volunteer run DIY bike menchaic shop, where those who didn't know could learn how to build or maintain and repair their bikes and those who did know could utilize a vast array of tools; five dollars gave you an hour of stand time and tool use, and often there was also cheap used replacement parts available. It was a pillar resource for low-income Portland cyclists, but I'm saying "was" because it closed shop in response to the pandemic. It's not completely closed: during summer they were letting Community Cycling Center volunteers do free repairs for essential workers one day a week, but summer is over and now all they're doing is selling stuff one day a week. I base my beef on this simple fact: Bike Farm is a warehouse! It's got to be the easiest possible indoor environment to keep people socially distanced; in fact, I don't think I ever stood within six feet of anyone whenever I used the place before the coronavirus struck us.

As a result of this major disappointment, the much more forgivable and understandable disappointments of other low-income cyclist resources closing down or reducing access, and bike stores becoming absurdly back-logged in mechanic availability, I've decided I'm going to be my own bicycle mechanic shop. It'll take a while, but I refuse to financially support traitorous cowards who abandon the poor.

Yuppie Jogger Plague Rats
I never liked joggers to begin with: there's just something contemptible about people who so proudly parade before the world their superficial vanity, unresolved insecurities, and craven age-denial and death-avoidance. (I'm reminded of Jesus' disdain for the sanctimonious Pharisees and their self-righteous exhibitionism — except at least those guys faked being godly and wise, rather than merely faking being eternally youthful and virile.) But, now these asymptomatic asswipes are huffing and puffing aerosolized moisture droplets all around as they breeze past you in their athletic pursuit of conspicuous self-obsession. Who are these people, anyway? None of them were around when I grew up out in Powelhurst in East Portland, because back then we only had a handful of Californians who moved up here — and those guys actually moved here to be here instead of moving here to terraform Portland into another chichi strip mall for yoga-mat elitist corporate drones. I suppose this complaint is just an extension of my objection to the invasion of what I consider to be a materialistic and elitist culture that's incompatible with the lack of pretension I always admired about the Pacific Northwest. But, it's worthy of mention because I and others can catch seriously ill (or dead) because some ex-pat Bay Area techyuppie's a vapid self-absorbed social-contract imbecile.

I'm starting to seriously want to blast these privileged punks in the face with pepper spray and then smash their ankles into pulp with my bike lock!

Multnomah County Library
Now this here is an ancient hate; only it was the coronavirus response of theirs that teetered me over into sufficient contempt to boycot the system and vote against it every time it comes up in a ballot measure. First off: it's gone all techyuppie, and has favored DRM digital media over hard copies of material — which I view as a class warfare sally against the poor (I've been wanting to copy tracks from CDs of bossa nova and bebop jazz, especially because I dislike enough songs on individual albums to balk at making any purchases). Secondly: the work culture and my interactions with staff there have always been heavily redolent of that left-fascist new-age social engineering ideology I'm vehemently oppsoed to on a fundamental, almost reptilan-brain basis. Thirdly: who are all these people making good money and garnering exceptional county employee perqs, who just putter around all day not even looking busy, and often aren't even that good at assisting patrons? And finally: they lay off a third of their workforce and require people to make appointments to pick up books placed on hold … that they waited months for, in response to the pandemic? I'm not some anti-literate redneck; in fact, by not checking out books I'm going to end up reading a lot of classics, something I've always whimsically meant to get around to. As for my criticisms pertaining to its cost and effectiveness; I've worked in a college library, so I'm not an ignorant outsider.

Fortunately for me, I got a chance to put my money where my mouth is this election; I voted against increasing their funding. (A pity the BLM rioters never got around to burning down the central library building downtown.)

Central City Concern Etc
Central City Concern is one of the three social services megacomplexes here in Portland, that helps damaged and distressed people with housing, mental health, and adictions issues. I never cared much for these guys because I always felt they were — as a former friend named Kif aptly put it — poverty pimps. Their housing buildings are some of the most unsafe and unsanitary living conditions you can find outside of landfills and the more squalid of freeway homeless camps, their addictions treatment is typically ineffectual and quasi-religious and pseudo-scientific, and their mental health treatment is less science and more cultural indoctrination. They talk up transparency and accountability, yet are themselves opaque and unbridled; and they love to medicate those they can and control whatever welfare money they receive. Nobody who works there has a real degree, or if they do engages in what could be considered a real practice — it's bottom-of-the-barrel psychology and therapy, that inculcates passive-aggressiveness and acquiescence to elite capitalism and corrupt jurisprudence, dependency on social welfare, and preaches mainstream New Age "spiritual" intellectual retardation.

Now they're all at home working from their phones, and are even less useful than they barely were before the pandemic. In fact, the only thing they're still faithfully doing is handing out meds and holding onto clients' social security checks!

Antifa, BLM, Patriot Prayer Etc
I never thought much of my fellow Americans or of the various mainstream cultures that make up of schismatic and bellicose republic, and in recent years I've grown increasingly alarmed at the emerging polarization and extremism I've seen. But, 2020 has got to be a new high-water mark in the sheer stupidity, goose-stepping groupthink, and explosive violence in our society. On the one side you have anti-intellectual throwback bigots who want turn the clock back on workers and renters rights, racial equality, women's rights, humane and rehabilitative jurisprudence, and tolerance of formerly fringe subcultures like the LGBT scene. On the other hand you have new age social engineers politicizing science and conducting sexual experiments on children, scorning Western culture and promoting anti-white racist shaming, pushing societally destructive permissiveness, and erecting a welfare dependency state. Fascists on the Left, fascists on the Right, as my trans friend so aptly put it.

I consider this mindless, violently angry, and unrelentingly other-seeking and -destroying state of American society to be symptomatic of the informal breakdown of our democracy. Again, I'm reminded of the brak-up of Yugolslavia. You can't have a functioning democracy when its citizenry is ignorant, self-centered, cowardly, and greedy — at least not without a strong government and an enemy or rival most people agree against.

Multnomah County Circuit Court
A perfect example of godawful timing, I was supposed to accept a plea bargain for a harassment charge just a week after the courthouse shut its doors to all jury trials and to courtroom appearances by offenders who aren't enmired in custody battles, aren't currently in the klink, or haven't been charged with serious property or violent crimes. Since March 30 I've been calling in periodically, only to have the judge tell me to call back next month; though thankfully from here on out I don't even have to make any more personal appearances. My attorney says misdemeanor cases like mine probably won't see the light of the courtroom until sometime next spring. That's ONE YEAR! I suppose I could make constructive use of this time to volunteer, so that when I finally go to court I won't have to worry about finding the time for that, especially since by then I'll either be looking for work or again gainfully employed.

All paltry and idiotic counted blessings aside, I'm incredulous: I never imagined I'd personally experience such a drastic formal breakdown in governmental function! I guess I always figured as crappy and absurd as it often gets the only time my local government would be interrupted would be during those occasional weak dustings of snow we Portlanders always freak out over; even those temporary federal shutdowns over congressional budget disputes haven't adversely affected me, though theoretically they can delay my rent assistance and SNAP benefits.

Second Thoughts re. Seeking Employment

Something that's bothered me most about this pandemic is that it struck us just as I was about to return to work. I was going to do a lot more, actually: exercise, try out some kind of meditative practice, engage in social gaming, volunteer somewhere weekly, and other self-development stuff like quitting spitting and taking up origami. After a few months canning I decided last month to resume the job search; the plague situation looked stable here in Oregon, and the summer-to-fall transition is usually the last hiring spree out of the year and in this case likely my last chance to land a potential keeper until next spring. I was going to start some of that self-betterment stuff, too, but so far all I've managed is to cut down drinking (which is actually a big deal). It didn't take me long to reverse my decision, at least regarding seeking employment.

Like that picture? That's a typical outdoor seating arrangement at the sushi place down the street from my apartment; most of the places I've seen in the area that offer outdoor seating are fudging between-party distances. I'm surrounded by highly educated (and class-conscious) Yuppie liberals, and even they're getting tired of the necessary constraints the pandemic imposed on us — before Portland got strangled by toxic wildfire discharge people were starting to uncover their nostrils wile wearing face coverings, more joggers and cyclists eschewed their use entirely, and dinner parties started growing larger and friendlier. And that's not even mentioning the droves of fools out there denying science that's been established since it was discovered flies weren't born from rotting meat, or who decry a rational pandemic response as a brutal assault on the constitution … or whatever other hare-brained buffoonery compels these guys to be so vehemently self-centered and socially irresponsible.

I'm not going to rub elbows with co-workers and get breathed all over and handle the cash and/or food of customers, probably indoors in poor air circulation. As much as I loathe scrounging for bottles and cans, and as abysmal as the hourly pay rate averages out, I'm at least one order of magnitude safer doing that. I'll just have to bite the bullet and cut most of the fun corners out of my budget. Which I've already started doing, now that I only drink a six-pack a week and have given up cigarettes. I can financially tread water through fall and winter, and maybe even spring; I'm supremely confident the coronavirus will kick us in the teeth as soon as we start spending more time indoors (as our colleges and universities are already foreshadowing). We'll also be shopping and traveling for the holidays. The flu season is right around the corner, too. And many of us on the West Coast have had our immune systems likely weakened by exposure to wildfire smoke.

A lot of people getting sick + a lot of people being fools + increasing favorability of environmental conditions = a lot more people getting sick, maybe to the point where our robber-baron feudal healthcare system seriously buckles under the strain and towns and counties get shut back down. I'm not taking any chances. I've smoked for almost thirty years; if I catch this I'll probably end up fighting it for a couple months and end up with permanent damage to my cardiovascular and respiratory systems — dodging this bullet could very well mean the difference between whether I die at sixty-two or seventy-two. Come to think of it, I'll probably eventually switch from using a magic scarf with an N95 filter folded inside it over to one of those 3M™ respirators (they're actually easier to breathe through). Besides, in the meantime I can still engage in self-betterment, right? I literally have nothing better to do.

Hippie Hygiene Revolution

COVID-19 and the absurd Bizarro© nightmare shopping for toilet paper became during the first couple months, has finally inspired me to give up TP altogether. This was no decision born out of whimsy, however; I've been entertaining the notion for a few years — I probably would have gotten around to it sometime within a year or two, definitely if I'd have moved out of housing into a van or RV. You see, for years I've grown increasingly interested both in eco-stewardship and the Spartan minimalism that life as a modern mechanized Mongol would necessitate, so it was inevitable that I'd make significant changes in my consumption patterns.

First off, I feel compelled to rebut squeamish people who would whine "Ewwwww!" Fred Flintstone didn't squeeze the Charmin™ back in Bedrock — TP is an historically recent phenomenon, and even today most of the world doesn't use it. Frankly, I think widespread adoption of toilet paper use is an early example of how opportunistic capitalism can artificially manufacture both a consumer need and a culture centered around it. Sounds crazy? If you’re reading this whilst drinking coffee, you’ll be interested to know that the coffee market was also crazy talk back in the seventeenth century, and it didn't gain acceptance until people started attaching bogus medicinal claims to its ingestion.

So, what do I use instead? Not a bidet, though I'm not repulsed by them like many Americans seem to be. I use a terry cloth rag stored in an open jar filled with water and vinegar, which I refresh every morning. Yes, I spend a lot more time looking at and handling my doodie, but I'm not deforesting my beautiful Pacific Northwest — though I'm still wasting water every time I flush, something I may never work around. Additionally, the handling of the rag forces me to wash my hands every time I use the bathroom (except to pee), which is a sort of hygienic lifehack that avoids the modern solution of allowing myself to become further infantilized by reliance on tech that I usually end up ignoring or silencing anyway.

Alas, water is where my conservation performance is weakest. I'm great at minimizing use of electricity, by doing things like eschewing air conditioning, only heating my bedroom during winter, and avoiding using both my computer monitor and my TV at the same time. I recycle rabidly diligently, especially now that it's once again my sole source of income; I refurbish older computers and rebuild older bicycles; I furnish my apartment with stuff I find or cobble together, and I’m not so posh as to insist on California king-sized mattresses and Czech crystal chandeliers. I don't drive, and if I did I'd be riding a motorcycle or living in a van I don't drive much. I'm not bragging, though, because much of why I have a small carbon footprint is because I'm simply too poor to be a consumer who has bleeding-edge smartphones and smart TVs, lives in a smart home, and drives one of those damn SUVs.

One way I've managed to cut down some of my wasteful water use is by switching to a regimen where I take a shallow oatmeal bath twice a week and sponge-bathe with vinegar and water on the other days. I realize aerated shower heads result in pretty efficient water use, but the apartment I live in has low water pressure and I'm not about to bathe AND shower throughout the week — sponge bathing is simply how I make up for the exorbitant use of water all baths ultimately are. No need to thank me, Mother Earth; the best anyone could ever do will never be enough, not compared to the titanic waste production capabaility of megacorporations.

Movin' on Up!

I'm living in the pearl Court Apartments now, another subsidized low-income apartment unit owned by Home Forward in the Pearl District. The Fountain Place Apartments downtown where I used to live is undergoing a seismic upgrade, being one of those ancient unreinforced masonry buildings that like to bury people alive or dead in temblors. The building I'm in now is a modern one and is in some ways better and in some ways worse: the wiring and the flooring and the windows are all better, but the water pressure is crap and the apartment is heated by those grody air vents — plus my bedroom has a brand new carpet that is out-gassing horribly. Also this building is much larger and is dedicated entirely to low-income residents, so it has a different, slightly ghetto institutional feel to it (the Fountain Place was a mixed building, with some market-rate and some subsidized units).

Home sweet home, as is sometimes said; at least for the time being. I'm supposed to return to the Fountain Place Apartments once the renovation of that building is complete, because as a project-based section 8 voucher recipient my rent assistance is tied to the unit I lived in rather than to me as a person. Housing welfare is a mysterious animal compared to food stamps, the only other form of welfare I have experience with. It doesn't help that there's very little transparency or communication offered by those who administer it, and online research has thus far yielded little in the way of comprehensible and useful information. (What most people are familiar with is the housing choice section 8 voucher, which is one where a person can choose where to live — even move out of town or out of state.)

One thing I CAN say for sure is that I'm not looking forward to moving back to the Fountain Place Apartments! Not because of the building itself but because of the process. It took me five weeks to relocate, during which time I was constantly met with arbitrary-seeming bureaucratic demands — and the people who were supposed to be helping me seemed only to render what should have been a straightforward process a muddled anxiety-inducing clusterfuck!

Why was my income eligibility assessed as though I were fresh off the streets instead of being an interim transplant? Because of this, one of my neighbors ended up ineligible to move here because she earned too much, even though her income level was acceptable in the old building (different units and different buildings have different income eligibility caps, usually 40% or 60% or 80% of the area median income; though after you've moved in you're usually allowed to earn 140% of the maximum income you were allowed to earn to be eligible to move in). And why was I initially deemed ineligible to move here because I'm in the midst of legal proceedings, even though I haven't been convicted of anything yet? Is this how insurance companies circumvent presumption of innocence? And then there was the whole headache regarding reporting my income as a delivery courier for Postmates and Uber Eats! To verify my income for the purpose of proving that I'm eligible to move into a tax credit-funded low-income housing unit, I ended up submitting Schedule C from the 1040 tax form and all of my bank statements for the entire year; whereas if I had simply had an hourly-wage job all I would have had to submit would have been my W-2s or pay stubs!

And the question remains: will I even be returning to the Fountain Place Apartments? It's not outside of the realm of possibility, that Home Forward may sell the property. Actually the big question for me, and for everyone else receiving rent assistance, is just what the future has in store for housing welfare in this country? A lot of Americans hate us welfare recipients and want to all but obliterate social safety nets, even though for a single person earning minimum wage to afford the average rent of $1,482 for a one-bedroom apartment in Portland he'd have to work ninety hours a week! (This is based on housing costs being 35% of one's budget.)

It's not the Big One I'm afraid of, nor am I afraid of getting stricken down by the coronavirus. It's not even some sketchy tweaker neighbor setting the building on fire or nutting up on me with a knife ... shit, I'm not even afraid of four more years of Donald Trump! What scares me are the boorish assholes living down the street with ballots in one hand and ignorant hatred for victims of runaway capitalism in the other!

Is My Luck Turning for the Worse?

Well, a drunken incident where I got belligerent with a parking enforcement officer, and accidentally spit on her when I intended to spit on the ground beside in a crude gesture of contempt, just may completely destroy my life. Yeah, it was pretty dumb, but the shitstorm that's falling out of it seems to me to be logarithmically more retarded and exemplifies some of what disgusts me about our diseased and disintegrating society. No, I'm not going to get into it; it was obnoxious and dumb, but nobody got hurt and nothing really happened of any consequence.

I'm charged with harassment, and am due to go to trial over it on March 31 if the district attorney decides to proceed with prosecution on March 17, when the lawyers meet with the judge to make that determination. I suppose I'm lucky; I could have been charged with assault because I did in fact spit on her (on accident, I'll say again — I was so drunk I was having trouble walking my bike down the sidewalk … lol wait, I was walking it down the street?). My attorney hopes to have the charges dismissed if I engage in outpatient drug and alcohol treatment, which I'm going to start sometime this week. I don't really have such hopes, because the plaintiff was understandably outraged by my barbarous behavior, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway ... besides, I suppose it wouldn't hurt for me to dry out and sober up, if only to prolong the lifespan of my pancreas and liver. (I don't see much use in sobriety when your life isn't one that's worth being sober for, but at the same time I realize that I may never attain such a life until I go through the trial-by-fire of recovery.)

The reason I say this may destroy my life is because it's caused me to lose my contract with Über Eats, thanks to a bunch of creepy drivers in California sexually harassing passengers and causing the company to weather scores of lawsuits. So, now the only way I can earn any money is by returning bottles and cans for their deposits, and if I'm lucky maybe work an occasional day labor assignment. I don't even know how this pending court case will affect my ability to get a part-time job, but I'll find out soon enough when I resume looking for work — again, I'm not optimistic. Even worse, however, is that I may lose my housing and return to living on the streets. The subsidized housing building I currently live in is going to be seismically upgraded, and we all have to be out of here by the end of the month. My relocation to other buildings has been hampered by the fact that I'm currently in legal proceedings, and based on what I've read on the Housing Authority of Portland's web site there's a good chance that I'm no longer eligible to receive rent assistance or to live in one of their properties.

Because apparently the charge against me is considered a violent crime, even though in reality nothing violent occurred. Like I said, it was stupid and gross, but no harm was done; I'm not excusing my behavior, but I'm not about to rub shoulders with thugs and serial killers just because of some arbitrary legal definition. This is what happens when Americans get "tough on crime", the result of Americans informing themselves about human nature and how to run a society by watching fear-mongering other-hating propaganda like Fox News and CSI: Miami. As a result, I stand a good chance of being homeless and unemployable — a sure path toward becoming a mentally sound, sober (or at least functionally alcoholic), tax-paying and law-abiding contributor to society!

Of course, it's possible I may end up okay, or at least not living on the streets again. Central City Concern may be able to advocate on my behalf and finagle a way for me not to lose my housing voucher. We'll see. Again, I have to be out of here by the 29th, so I'll need to know soon so I can prepare for the worst. It's still winter, after all, and I suspect it will linger and transition into a colder- and wetter-than-usual spring. And, I figure I'll need about $200 to adequately initially prepare myself; and I'm no longer able to earn the kind of money I was when I was delivering for Über Eats.

It's Gonna Be a Busy Year

This will be a pretty busy year for me. I'm going to be enrolling in outpatient drug and alcohol treatment, I'm going to start looking for part-time mainstream wage-slave employment, I'll be actively seeking to start engaging in side-income projects like freelance writing and DIY crafts, I'll also start seriously learning bike mechanics and begin assembling them for fun and a meager under-the-table supplement to my income, I'll start putting myself out there socially, I'm going to be temporarily moving to a new apartment while this building gets a seismic upgrade … and, of course, it's election year, a time of grim foreboding I'm sure.

That's right, a seismic upgrade. More like a stress-inducing pain in the ass, to me. Because I live in a project-based section eight voucher, I'm at the mercy of how the political winds blow the sails of the federal government – and right now those winds are filling the sails with corruption and disintegration, being blown by a criminal upstart who is destabilizing society and destroying our government as a functional body. And he hates the poor, wants us all in chain gangs or debtors prisons or sleeping on the streets. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this amounts to displacement, that somehow I'll get priced out when I return here. That's why I'm going to be gearing up to be homeless, an if I'm lucky I may even be able to buy a van to live in.

As for all that other stuff, well it's just time for me to actually start moving forward with my life, rather than just spinning around in the same eddy ruminating on dissatisfaction and animosity whilst idly daydreaming about the better life I ignorantly believe I deserve. I got off the streets so I could stop being a victim and a loser, do things like sober up and get back to work, try to figure out how to get along with people and get a handle on the weirdness in my head. I'm probably never going to be truly self-sufficient, but at least I can be some kind of participant in society and enjoy myself a little bit.

Another Frustrating Postmates Day

Oops! Some high school girl expressed interest in delivering for Postmates while I was picking up an order from Chipotle, so I decided I'd give her the URL to this blog ... lol only to realize I haven't really started talking too much about the experience. So, this post is for her:

I'm not sure I like doing this. Of course I'm saying this after having plodded through the daytime dunderheads, who always frustrate me. I don't know why people who pride themselves on having “real” jobs have such a difficult time giving me adequate instructions for dropping off their food. For example, earlier today I lost a delivery opportunity because some lady working for the Portland Bureau of Transportation left me stranded out in the elevator lobby of the floor because she neglected to consider all the doors were employee access only. This happens pretty often, to the point where I'm seriously considering not delivering so much as a bag of chips until 3:00 PM; it just costs me too much time trying to get a hold of these people to clarify muddy or lacking instructions whilst mousing my way through labyrinthine secure office buildings — which ultimately costs me money.

Evening deliveries aren't without their problems, though those consist mostly of rush hour traffic stress and increasingly early sunsets. I actually prefer the orders and the customers of the evening hours: the orders tend to be larger, and the customers either aren't nearly as distracted or stupid as the daytime office drones are. Also they tip considerably more; many who work downtown are sullen Washingtonians or surly Clackistanians — the sort who piss all over the Oregonlive news story comments with their tea-party Victims of Liberal Agendas sniveling — and these people hate working downtown and despise things like tipping. (In fact, I think I'll compare tips received from deliveries conducted before 3:30 PM and after, to see if the number match my impressions.) The other problem with evening deliveries is sunset; that's when I turn invisible and am closer to the time when people start driving under the influence.

Yeah, actually, I just want a fairly steady 30-somthing hours a week wage-slave job. At first I enjoyed delivering for Postmates; I felt free, and it was exciting to be on a bike for the first time in nearly half a lifetime. Remember, I had gone through multiple mainstream jobs in the service sector that almost completely soured me to the idea of returning to work altogether. I don't have a schedule with Postmates, nor do I have a dress code, and I can pick and choose the deliveries I want to go on. But, it's not reliable or consistent, the damn taxes are ridiculously high because of my tax status as a sole proprietorship small business, and because about 51% of my total income comes from tips I'm forced into the awkward position of having to dazzle dolts like I'm some kind of server.

I like riding my bike, but it's become too much of an irksome and dangerous chore trying to share the road with fools who don't know how to handle four-way intersections without traffic lights, or for that matter can't even signal half their turns — and even then they don't until they're right at the intersection. And, well, this bike does need a little help. (In fact, I'm pretty jealous of these goddamn zombie Morlocks [street druggies] and vapid-consumer Yuppie riding around on nice equipment they use only fractionally as much as I use mine!) So, as soon as I'm in that culinary program and afterward when I'm wage-slave employed again, I may not do this at all and instead focus on other avenues to alternative income. No, I'm not saying what they are, at least not until they start earning me steady income.

(I hope the girl doesn't read EVERYTHING I've written in this blog! It's had some starkly melodramatic moments.)

The Future of Friendship

I'm a pretty shitty friend. I'm selfish to the point of being almost mercenary in my loyalties and commitments, I'm ready to succumb to suspicion at the least provocation, I'm emotionally immature — to the point where I probably more closely resemble an older adolescent when it comes to my expressions and responses, I'm irresponsible and unreliable and am not stable enough in my lifestyle to be an asset more than a burden, and my head is full of all sorts of weird hang-ups that seem to skew my perception of reality and my social posture toward the world.

Okay, I suppose I'm not a SHITTY friend, but I can certainly benefit by being a more easy-going, accepting, congenial person who isn't so prone to paranoid delusions and doesn't like arrogantly arguing mostly damnfool points — both of which doubtless are born out of insecurities. (Sometimes I wonder just how much of both rational and irrational [as in self-promoting and self-defeating] human behaviors crawl out of this dark womb.) That'll be hard work, though, and one I'll have to be careful about; I can't lose my edge, being poor and aging in a West Coast that's getting wilder by the decade, and being committed to a nihilistic dark-underbelly-of-Buddhism humanist worldview — I can't let myself turn into one of those banal inner-chakra drones that is too trusting or sacrificing to be passed over as a chump by my more blighted peers, even to become a “better” person.

Until I iron that out, I'm going to be stuck in a lame sort of limbo. People find their friends where they are, in various senses of the meaning of the word. We all know that we tend to clump together like wet feathers; we hang out with coworkers or classmates, neighbors, similarly interested or ideologically oriented, even those who simply look more similar to us than others. One thing we sometimes forget is that we tend to get along better with similar personalities; Eeyore and Pooh weren't roommates, and never would have been capable of harmonious cohabitation.

The limbo I'm referring to is one in which I'll be in between friends? Well, that didn't sound eloquent, or even explanatory, at all. I've had two sets of friends in the past: my peers on the streets, with whom I drank and got into squabbles and adventures with, and my two “normal” friends. I'm in the process of losing the latter just as I'm striving to move beyond the former in my quest to better my life. It sucks, because the former, my prior peers, are the only ones I get along with consistently; I'm just too damn needy and moody and mouthy for my “normal” friends (and I'm despairingly certain the one among them I love the most is texting her way out of my life for good). And it will remain in limbo for a while, I suspect, because I'm just not that embracing of others — I consider befriending and dating new people a dismal lottery with video poker odds.

All maudlin aside, just what exactly will my future social life look like? If I quit drinking for good and work part-time, I'll most likely not be drinking Hamm's with Captain Caveman et al by the light of a loading dock lamp anymore. Even though I'll be working part-time, I don't typically pal around with co-workers, so that will leave me with ... heh, not much. Maybe I'll be forced by circumstance to take Proust's advice, and just play Karnöffel and koikoi with casual acquaintances? Even if I become that ultimate “better” person, I'll still miss the old Canterbury Tales crowd every now and then. (Not as much as I’ll miss that one “normal” friend, though!)

Another One Bites the Dust

Committed a total newb mistake last Friday night: I ate it on slick streetcar rails, fairly badly. I bashed an adductor magnus (such a cool name!), the adjoining hip and an elbow a little; my head, too, if I weren't wearing a helmet. (WEAR YOUR FUCKING HELMETS PEOPLE!!!) I'm going to get my hip x-rayed, days late, of course, because I'm a bad patient. I don't think anything got broken, though the elbow sometimes feels like I could have incurred a meager fracture of some sort. I'm still pretty gimpy from the accident, but I've managed to run a few deliveries the past couple days. Well, I'll be better soon, at least enough to walk normal and get on and off my bike somewhat gracefully.

Frankly, I'm starting to have reservations about being a cyclist. I haven't really done anything to my bike except wreck it and barely keep it running with a — probably dangerously — warped rear wheel. The deliveries are only paying so well, especially considering 51% of my earnings come from tips and how much in taxes I'll owe at year's end; I'd probably be earning more if I were still slinging Dippin’ Dots and popping kettle corn at the stadium. The roads are terrifying game preserves wherein prowl SUVs and biggus-dickus trucks driven by dangerously inattentive and inept buffoons, who flail at intersections, can't park, and never signal. (Weren't those big vehicles supposed to go out of style, or did they briefly and come back?) These supersized Hot Wheels are also parked alongside curbs, but up to a foot away … so, it gets crowded on a lot of streets, and I get nervous as hell when I'm squeezed in between walls of man-crushing titans. And then there's the inevitable end of summer: not too long from now it will be dark and rainy much of the time, not to mention windy and occasionally icy.

We'll see. I may feel better about it after my body heals and I manage to get some real work done on the bike. Also after I get a decent part-time wage slave job somewhere. lol And, yes, I'm also going to buy some body armor, probably of the kind mountain bikers use; I'll totally feel ridiculous wearing it for a while, because I'll probably end up looking like some poser Dark Lord of the Sith — but I'll be damned if I cruise around with no protection at all, like those foolish single-speed hipster/messenger kids do. And, as silly as it may sound, I'm pretty bummed about having lost my cute little lucky cat bell! I'm replacing it, of course, but this time I'm going to fasten it to my backpack with some burly nylon cord.