Ever try to do the right thing? Terrible idea because the forces of fate are loathe to permit such acts of responsibility society puts forth as ideal standards. Time and time again the inclinations of would-be do-gooders result in failure, ridicule and winking, “should’ve known better” glances as the viral tales of defeat spread from amused bystanders to friends, family and co-workers.

My own life has been a steady trickle of avoiding situations which require a choice of right or wrong because the fear of retribution and the desire to act in accordance to values promulgated by church and state conspire with handshakes and bank transfers to tear me asunder. I hate the metro stops along the Embarcadero for the simple fact that they have fare boxes at either entry and standing on the platform suggests that the social contract has been signed– you have paid the entry fee and are waiting with evidence of this transaction for your civil chariot.

It may surprise you that I’m at all hesitant to pay for the bus. Okay, it doesn’t surprise the people who think of me as a pauper among misers nor the people who know of my coin jars but it might seem contrary to those who know my opinions on civic infrastructure and transportation: cities should not require the use of a car for the citizens to get to and from home and work and all points between. San Francisco has a far-reaching bus and trolly system which provides ample coverage but has never been able to manage this service in a timely, clean or safe manner. If the bus driver isn’t taking out a stop shelter or if the train isn’t dragging old Chinese women underneath then there’s a lunatic who has spent the past week marinating in their own shit yelling at their invisible friend or some kid with a gun in their backpack in the wrong part of town. All this after you waited for half an hour in the rain and get skipped by the first two busses which are packed closely followed by the third which is only going half the route.

So when you walk up to one of the Proof of Payment (POP) stops you’re subject to trying to ignore the fare cop who’s standing in your personal space shouting in a desperate attempt to raise their voice above your headphones– wearing dark sunglasses helps. But the cops are no where to be seen when you’re standing at the entry eyeing the fare boxes and so the casual observers will see only you paying for no damned reason and thinking you’re the fool for doing so. The only reason is fear of being caught but I always lost in the battle of fears and I always paced nervously around the stop near suffocation. For some reason I never had any problem smoking the whole time which is also liable for a ticket even after a maintenance worker warned me.

The odds are on your side, of course. How many fare cops can there be out there at any given time? There’s seven metro lines with any number of cars on the rails going two different directions. The underground stations are probably where most of the searches take place because tourists are easier to intimidate and not even the fare cops actually wanna ride MUNI. Hell, it’s not that long ago no one even gave a shit about the fare collection. Little kids would stare down bus drivers after running on the back door, bums would wave spent kleenex for fast passes and station attendants, if there was one, were usually too busy talking to someone to notice anyone hopping the stile. Shit, they didn’t even seem to notice anyone opening the wheelchair gate and its piercing alarm. But then they built these new stations out by State and the mall which was a joke. Except to Jay, the only person who was ever busted for fare evasion resulting in the second time he had to go to juvenile court. (more…)

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I sincerely apologize…

It’s been a hell of a month and it seems knowing me was a sure fire way to have some trauma in your life:

Three people I know lost loved ones this month, one losing two friends in seperate overdoses. A friend’s grandfather also was admitted to the ICU with a highly elevated white blood cell count but no tests have proven conclusive last I’d heard…

My parents’ both lost their cars in one fell swoop. A high speed chase ended in my dad’s van which ended in my mom’s car. Both rear axles were snapped and the insurance company towed the derelict husks away in exchange for a total of five grand which, as you probably know, doesn’t buy a new car let alone two. This instigated a week-long mess for the folks which involved trains to Sacramento, cell phones landing in Salt Lake City needing to be returned, locking keys in cars (on loan) and a faulty oil change dumping everything on the street and leaving the car empty and needing to be towed to a diagnostic by Honda. When I last saw them they were just finishing the paperwork for the accident a week prior and looked pretty worn out.

My roommate had a late night collision leaving his bike a little fucked, the car unfucked and some staples in his head. Black eye, swollen face, light concussion ambulance ride and a night in the hospital. After a couple days being cared for by his mom he returned home wearing huge and ugly sunglasses but in a chipper mood.

Two friends spent time in psych wards, one brought by the cops and one on their own terms. The spiral of impact these events had on others was enough to wipe me out for a month on their own so luckily they happened within a week of each other smack dab in the middle.

One friend decided to check into rehab which I guess is good but also carries a lot of bad into the conversation. The same head-trip as the last paragraph, I suppose: where were you before all this happened and why do you think trying to deal with if after makes up for the neglect and carelessness you showed not being there for people… Ah…

Hell, I was declined for the first credit card I ever applied for because I don’t have any references. How do you get references? You have previous credit cards. They offered me a lower limit pre-paid card but frankly I just wanted free airline miles so fuck you and the pigs…

Feel like I’m forgetting things and to be honest I probably am since I lost my ability to think about two weeks ago and have only slowly begun to sleep more than six hours at a time and complete sentences again.

It wasn’t all bad: a friend of mine found out she was pregnant (which was good news) and two friends just announced today they had birthed a baby girl. Two friends got married (to each other, which is easier to deal with) and I was allowed to watch. A lot of people were in town who I don’t get to see very often and it was great to be able to spend a little bit of time catching up. Then again my friend in from Minneapolis was hung over when we met (we only had an hour due to my dealing with some shit and his previous engagements) and tho he was doing well it did come out that someone we had both worked with and been friends with years back had been killed a couple years ago in an accident. Tho by a bow or a boat I’m still not certain. Anyways, it brought the already quiet and still morning to an even slower speed.

Anyways, a pretty polarized month. More eventful then most, to be sure, but I’m not really made for constant activity of the best sort let alone the worst. Again, I’m sure I’ve neglected to write something down so if I’ve missed your personal trauma and you would like an apology just get in touch. If I neglected your happiness remind me of that too unless I just pissed you off…

Sorry for another indulgent, off the wrist posting. No pics, no links, no regard for the world outside my head… Shame, for shame! I promise to get the pony started in July with actual research and thinking and cross-references and babies flying out of carriages and shit… Seems like I’m dripping topics from my pants right now.

Let’s be safe out there.

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Sunshine, cool breeze, pot of coffee down and crawling slowly up towards the base of the spine– pretty good for an earlyish morning walk to work… Passed Buena Vista and caught the locals cracking their breakfast 40_oz.

Still confused despite the coffee and the shower and the leisure hour before needing to hurry to do anything… As I’m walking a woman is approaching with a stroller while dangling a four or five year old from one shoulder– they are catalogued as probable obstacles to be observed closer to contact and my thoughts wander off. When I check back on their progress they’ve started crossing the street I’m coming up on and I scan the terrain for my maneuvering. The four or five year old has succeeded in detatching himself from the more traditional piggy-back position to a semi-simian swinging down the woman’s back… One arm has been reached back so that she can contain the child… I give myself a wider berth than originally intended and wander off into my head again…

As they come up to the curb, as I come up to the corner, I notice that the four or five year old has begun sliding down the woman’s back and she reached with both hands to contain him… This leaves the stroller free to ride the slight incline of the street towards the gutter and it begins to explore the possibilities of motion with timid steps… She looks up from her wrestling match and gauges the stroller’s progress, then turns around to remove the little parasite completely from her back… I guess she’s got it, right?

But she didn’t have it at all and when I finally reached that conclusion and began running towards the stroller it had hit ideal velocity so as to elude both of our outstretched grasps… From a foot away, leaning forward and clutching at air, I watch the stroller collide with the curb and pitch forward– I catch a brief but detailed glimpse of a little blonde toddler whipping forward like a boneless chicken at a clown convention just before the arc had completed and the toddler and stroller slammed face-first into the sidewalk… Not very good with public speaking I tried a very loud and robust “Jesus!”…

Both the woman and I grab the stroller but we have different ideas about how to raise it from the sidewalk… My gentle lifting did not suffice and she instead chose to yank the handle back so that the boneless chicken baby inside whipped backwards with such violence my little lizard brain forced my arms out to grab the head of the child and steady it… There I am cradling some baby’s head as it begins howling– I let go of the kid… The woman is standing shocked, gaping, unsure– the four or five year old is staring at me with eyes of true hatred…

A cookie is inserted to the screaming baby and the howls stop… Red in the face, damp cheeked, but lacking obvious signs of trauma the baby begins to cover its face with crumbs… The woman looks at me and says, “I guess the carriage must have protected him somehow” and continues to stand and gape… I check the four or five year old who has not yet forgiven my existence and continues to glare at me in an attempt to cause spontaneous combustion… I find myself on one knee gathering little toys and baubles which have spilled out onto the ground in the crash… The happy little trio rambles off the way they were going… A woman halfway up the street I was crossing calls out, “Is the baby okay?” I guess so…

In other news I’ve recently signed up as a member of shelfari which resembles myspace for people who don’t have any personalities and try to impress everyone with their book collections… It might just be stupid but it could also be a way to share books you’re reading and find out about things that might interest you… It’s free and it doesn’t appear to have any evil corporate ties beyond the obvious amazon linkage… Sign up if you like and learn me some– my member ID should be familiar enough…

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A bit of sadness– my old coffee grinder broke one morning just as I was readying my morning pot… Something of a family heirloom, the grinder had come from my aunt and uncle and was probably as old as I am… Looking at the snapped cord, severed right at the base of the machine, was frustrating to say the least… Here is a mechanical problem possibly easy to fix… I’ve made electrical cords before (and only set fire to a kitchen once) and the engine had been working just fine prior to the accident… But if the mechanical problem is not fixed immediately I will have some severe social problems in twenty-four hours time beginning with the first person who talks to me and ending with me in jail…

Luckily I had enough sense to judge immediately that while I could eventually repair the damage but not soon enough to have coffee the next morning thus saving me a lot of yelling obscenities at the coffee grinder while trying to solder the bits back together late that evening… I would have to, sadly, buy a replacement but nothing more than a bridge between today and the eventuality of the repair…

Having entertained some rather suspicious ideas in my past I was aware that there are manual coffee mills in existence just like many other modern conveniences coopted by mass production and consummerism… Unfortuantely I don’t have the catalogue which sells these, water cisterns for collecting rain, camping showers and solar panels anymore– maybe I do, actually… Anyways, my impusle here was that, in order to justify the purchasing of a new piece of machinery to act as a temporary replacement I would purchase one which required no electricity but didn’t have much in the way of clues for finding one… Sadly I don’t even know where to buy an electric coffee grinder except Bed Bath and Beyond…

I did have a faint memory from years past, tho, and walked down to the Castro where I found a small variety store stocking everything from hardware to small kitchen appliances… There was a scandalously beautiful girl on a ladder who helped me find the coffee grinders available for sale– one model in two colors and the closest the store had to a manual appliance were spice mills… Not quite the same thing, we agreed…

So I bought the black one and brought it home where I left it boxed up in my backpack until the next morning… It feels light and cheaply made and the lid is shaped exactly like the opening of my coffee pot which means the first thing I did with my new coffee grinder was drop the grounds and the lid into the pot… I checked the warranty– one year deal… Of course it’s a on year deal– it’s not made to last forever…

Things are made to last forever anymore be it a coffee grinder or a job or a relationship… Facts of life, adapt and move on kids… Everything and everyone lands in the landfill sooner or later and we’ll just build another Walmart on top when the bulldozers have buried a generation’s worth of garbage… My only hope to alleviating my personal responsibility in regards to my most recent purchase is that I’ll have taken the initiative to repair my broken heirloom before this piece of garbage breaks down…

Probably due to the advent of the holiday shopping season there was a news story on a group of middle class whites in Bernal Heights who formed a club to not buy any new products for a year… Garage sales, craigslist trades– these weren’t dumpstering types but they went that extra mile and circumvented the traditional shopping experience and acquired, well, a bunch of kitchy junk no one needs… There may or may not have been political or environmental idealogies expressed during said news story but nothing you can’t hear from the middle class white in the sweater next to you… The reporter asked if there was anything that had provided a real challange to these brave new consumer pioneers… Yes, said a middle class white in a sweater, there were these stemless wine glasses I really wanted…

Last year I gave the family books for the holiday season which requires a little more creativity then I generally employ in showing my love for them but, luckily, is cheaper… My sister and father got used books I could easily explain and my mother, difficult woman that she is, got a new book with a receipt for returning although I’m not certain if she every returned it, read it or remembers it exists…  It’s not really a strecth for me to be buying used shit– it’s a stretch for me to buy shit and it’s a further one for me to buy anything new… But what strikes me is how crummy I felt giving people used books for Jesus day, like I was handing poorly wrapped evidence of my lack of caring, seasonal involvement, and personal problems I’ve yet to climb over on my way to a salaried job with a wife (even mailordered) and offspring… I’m sure the family doesn’t give a shit I gave them used books– they certainly didn’t say anything about it nor were there any recognizable inferences to my being cheap… Still, all the same, there’s a certain conditioning that’s occured where it makes me feel bad… Me, who can stand in a dumpster for half an hour kicking through shit and have a grand time…

And as much agonizing as I’d like to pretend it causes me I bet I’d feel a cleaner break with the holidays if I just dumped my pennies at the Macy’s counter and bought some shrink-wrapped gadgetry and knickknacks to pass round… Something I don’t care about, something the receipiant doesn’t care about, something with a year long lease and a short trip to the city dump on the horizon…

Oh, and more evidence that God’s been laughing at me all these years after I got home from being creepy to the girl at the variety store I received a postcard– an artcard, really– from my friend Nancy… On the back was a catalogue image offering an old styled hand cranked laundry washer requiring no electricity and only the amount of water to use to wash what you’re washing… Ah, but I wouldn’t know where to keep that– my bedrooms’s still a coffin…

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In response to not having a computer I tried to write something in a notebook with the intention of working on whatever ideas landed on the page at a computer later… Instead I had a quickly written rant with no opportunity to tease out ideas or thoughts and the night I thought I might spend a little company time looking around the internet to help flesh things out a bit my manager walked in the room snooping which, obviously, ruined the thought… So instead we have yet another overly emotional, from the hip rant about nothing in particular but transcribed from a notebook and written as quickly as possible on a lunch break in a coffee shop after the girl working there showed me her fucked up wrist she injured in the Odwalla cooler the night before:

Ain’t nothing to do– the traditional rallying cry for bored teenagers, reaction against the frustrations and powerlessness of youth… A million nights of drinking and drugs, thousands of bands, hundreds of fanzines all sprang forth from one shared sensation… We stayed up til’ dawn watching horror movies or playing the same songs over and over again in the motorcycle shop… The Dead Boys beat up hippies and knocked old men down…

In recent weeks I’ve attempted to corrale countless friends into a variety of the traditional activities which were once born from boredom and frustration, but phoned inqueries– what’re y’doing?– no longer find the answer of ‘nothing’… Now people have to wake up early for work, or stay home studying for school or are just too tired to contemplate anything beyond microwaving a meal and watching television… Guess we’ve gotten older and things to do have been found…

Must be a natural progression, through the phases documented by films and books… Hormones run rampant for a couple of years and everyone’s nuts, acting out and picking through their obsessions… Then it’s time to mature, time to go to college and so the band breaks up, the zine doesn’t seem important anymore and another form of acting out and picking through obsessions ensues… By the time we’ve been suitably groomed for entering the work-force the bands and zines have been whittled down to almost nothing, property of the immature and disconnected… Sure, you can set aside a little time on the weekend to pursue your former ambitions or passions or whatever’s less embarassing a term, maybe take a class one night and if you’re up for it you can catch a movie Friday night: but these are now hobbies, not what you do… These things no longer define or identify you…

The flexibility is gone, we have our obligations and we have our schedules… If you’re lucky you enjoy your job– there’s a sense of accomplishment and a sense of worth resulting from every eight hour day… Most people find their way to places that aren’t so bad– the work isn’t terribly demanding, the co-workers are nice enough and the money’s pretty good… You get up and you spend an hour getting ready, an hour going to work, an hour for lunch, and hour to go home, an hour dealing with dinner, an hour trying to relax and an hour trying to fall asleep…

Maybe one day you’ll have a family and a 30-year mortgage… A trip to Europe, a family vacation to Disneyland, a big screen TV and a car… Your sense of what’s going on will become informed by product placement and labor day sales at Macy’s or whatever Junior’s demanding for pulling a straight B average… Maybe one day while cleaning out the attic you’ll come across an old shoebox with that tape your old band recorded, a copy of that zine you used to do, a reel of Super 8– God how embarassing… Maybe you’ll remember people you haven’t seen or even thought about for years and smile, or feel a little sad, or feel a little angry, or feel a little proud or even a little stupid… But you carefully put the lid back on the box and dig around further looking for the fucking Christmas lights…

Well, there’s always your mid-life crisis to look forward to…

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