Trumpery

This started as a rant about a few of the things on Trump’s 100 days itinerary, including lifting restrictions on production of domestic energy and allowing for energy infrastructure projects, cancel or renegotiate connections to NAFTA and the UN, remove criminal illegal immigrants, redirect education money to allow for choice of institution, cancel the Common Core, build a wall along the Mexican border, restore the NSA, and expand investment on military, local, and federal law enforcement.

Essentially a police state with deregulated production on old school energy, scattershot education funding, and a dissolution of the nationwide unification of standards and timelines started by the state to state adoption of the reviled Common Core.

Instead, it’s a synopsis of (mostly) everything we’ve seen over the last long election process.

When Trump first stepped into the public arena, he railed against the Mexicans filing into America, and how they wouldn’t bring their best. In fact, they’d bring drugs, crime, and rapists. “And some, I assume, are good people.”

Thus began the endless, tedious, money-draining race for the American presidency. This statement was the first clue that Trump doesn’t speak textbook, fluid English. He speaks colloquial English, which is partly why he won. He speaks normal human. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it’s not bad either. The good thing is the now infamous quote woke up an entire generation of future voters. Whether they stay politically active remains to be seen. It’s very likely that after the heated petitions and statements against the electoral college dies down, we’ll all go back to apathetic citizens wandering around in comfortable complacency, doing what normal humans do every day: eat, sleep, work, play, repeat.

I teach in a community that is over 80 percent Latino, and I can only assume by the national conversation that ensued that the ‘rapist’ comment woke up a lot of sleepy Americans who normally could care less about politics or the bloated marshmallow heads that get up behind those podiums and blather on with little to no substance for days on end until the fateful November 8 voting day.

Here’s the thing. America voted. The popular vote was basically 50/50, or 47.66% to 47.5% in favor of Clinton. Ignore the pithy 200,000 votes in favor of Clinton. Two hundred thousand votes in a country of 318.9 million people is nothing.

You might call bullshit and say what’s the point of voting then. That’s not what I’m saying. My point is that it’s so incredibly close that neither candidate is better than the other. Clinton may have been more environmentally friendly, while Trump is definitely not, but the fact that the country was so evenly split means they’re opposite ends of the same stick.

It's Yuge! And bigly. 

During the third debate there was a randomly selected public audience on stage of still undecided voters. Put aside for the moment that after 15 months there were still people who were undecided, which roughly translated means both candidates were interchangeable talking heads who appealed to no one. One of these strangely dressed, awkward people asked how the candidates would connect to the people.

Clinton gave an example of knowing someone named Luis (or Juan, or Pepe, or some ethnic Latino name) who needed a job, so she got him one. Basically, her connection was that she had some Mexican people working for her and she kept them employed. Trump went on some blathering story about driving through the projects in his limo, and how it looked bad, so he kept driving. Sure, Latinos are predominantly associated with low-level labor, while blacks live in scary, run-down projects that look like sets from dystopian movies, but is that what it means to connect to the people? That you’re aware of the bottom feeders? Not all “minorities” are lowly beings in need of a socialist government. Some are scholars, business owners, politicians … and presidents.

The best arguments being presented now that the public has spoken is the skewering of political correctness (PC), and the counterpoint to the claim that Trump’s supporters were mostly ‘uneducated’ white, blue-collar workers.

Many are arguing that PC sentimentality weakened the public discourse because people were afraid to say what they believed in or who they were voting for. To put a label on it, the liberal left has fought long and hard to streamline language and action so everyone is included. This means we speak with this cultural inclusivity or be called a homophobe, racist, or misogynist, or as some might call it, talk toward positive social change. The extreme of this is that if people hold orthodox religious views they become gay bashers or gender traitors for adhering to more traditional roles for women and men.

Does this mean one side is more right than the other? No, but let’s take the Vice President elect, creationist Mike Pence, and his views on the “theory” of evolution and Natural Design. It certainly isn’t PC to teach Natural Design in schools, because of the separation of church and state (which is a completely nonexistent thing, considering we pledge allegiance to the flag “one nation, under god,” and swear on the bible in court to prove we’ll state the whole truth and nothing but the truth). Additionally, the Common Core, which Trump wants to eliminate, allows for discussion and analysis of fiction and how it may draw on religious works such as the bible. Prior to standards like this, it was generally frowned upon and actually kind of dangerous to open up religious discussion and connections in a classroom.

Pence focuses his argument on the word “theory,” and how evolution is just that. The way he argues he seems convinced that a “theory” is synonymous with “belief,” much like Natural Design. However, theory, “a system of ideas intended to explain something based on general principles,” when applied to the theory of evolution, has been established as somewhat irrefutable as scientific fact. Evolution is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science. Does this mean we shouldn’t teach creationism in the classroom?

No. Students should be presented with ideas on any level, as long as they’re appropriate. Depending on which poll you want to follow (and we all know how legitimate polls can be, considering the 2106 election turnout), 70 to over 80 percent of Americans identify as Christian, while about 15 percent have no religion, with about a 4 percent group subscribing to something other than Christianity. Don’t worry about the math, the numbers will probably change based on the time of day, who won Nascar, or what someone had for dinner. Basically, 15 percent or less of America aren’t actively religious in some way. What this means is teachers are being incredibly biased if they don’t present, on some level, religious ideas in a classroom as additional content for analysis.

This point leads toward the so-called ‘uneducated’ white people who voted for Trump. They weren’t uneducated, they just didn’t go to college. There are several fairly famously successful people who were ‘uneducated.’ Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Dave Thomas, David Green, Larry Ellison, Kevin Rose, Michael Dell, and … Rachel Ray? These names are associated with companies like Apple, Virgin, Wendy’s, Hobby Lobby, Oracle, Digg, Dell, and cooking on TV.

However, being entrepreneurial is one thing; deciphering propaganda and misinformation is another. Does this mean the American public was duped into voting for Trump? No, the 50 percent of the population that voted for Trump believed in him. Does this mean Clinton’s supporters voted based on facts? Not necessarily. While she was disturbingly qualified for office, she was the White Queen of politics who got rooked by Trump in his gilded castle. Sadly, politicians mostly get voted in based on their personalities, not their ideas. Claiming all Trump supporters are white racist troglodytes is the same as saying all Clinton supporters are over-educated females.

What does this mean for the next four years? Mainly that some citizens are rapists, while others are good people, and we won’t know who anyone is unless we feel free to talk about what we believe in.

Discuss.

Easter

Where does the Easter Bunny go once he stops putting forth his eggs?

The North Pole, into Santa's concrete basement? Left to nothing but a layer of cedar chips and heat lamps and a mere 27 inch widescreen TV?
No, nothing quite so gauche.
The bunny originated from ancient fertility goddesses, and the idea that rabbits, well, breed like rabbits: thus, be fruitful and multiply. The fact that Jesus rose from the dead on the same day contributes to the whole rebirth thing, although he must have been somewhat grungy—sort of like a rawhide bone that your dog buries in the back yard, then retrieves a day or so later, so that the bone has that tasty sample of cat poop, bug juice, and dirt.
I work for a restaurant, and three people came in dressed as zombies. Awesome. Not once did they break character, but they did manage to upset some grandmother-age ladies. I'm not sure why, mayhaps because Jesus would have been a zombie? A few people didn't get it, or were otherwise nonplussed by the theatrics of it.
I say hoorah, and that combined with an Easter Bunny siting made  the whole day rather circus like. I just hope the bunny is comfortable, wherever he doth go. She?

The iPad

You know you want one.
It's like a book with a brain. A computer without a keyboard. The reason the decaying print industry will be revived. Naysayers say they don't need one.
They're just jealous.
While there are many pads out there, the iPad is going to stomp the competition and change the world as we manipulate it.
Text 2.0 will enable us to warp our reading habits as we read. Magazines and newspapers will never be so cool. Games, above all else, will take on a 'whole ... nuvva, level.'
The iPad is like the first cell phone brick all over again, and the first adopters are going to lug the thing around like they've got gold bullion. If I had an extra several hundred dollars I wouldn't hesitate to get the thing I definitely do not need but could find so many uses for once I had one.

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I will be leaving this site. But have no fear, I have established another, newer, shinier, much more impressive site.

Follow me, oh grand followers, to randompress.net, and continue the ride.

For the Dogs

What follows is a rough draft of an incident that happened in the late summer of 2005.


Some time last summer I was watching some dogs for a family. Simultaneously, a married couple flew in, so we decided to take a walk along Butterfly Beach in Montecito.

The day was overcast, and almost raining, with nary a soul along the entire stretch of beach except for us and another lady with dogs. We walked from Miramar up the coast toward Graveyards, at the north end of Butterfly. On our way back, we noticed a dog catcher on the steps at Butterfly, and as we walked closer, he slowly made his way down to the lowtide waterline, strategically angling his timing and approach to meet with us head on.

Well. We turned back briefly, giving me enough time to put the two boisterous chocolate labs on leashes, and started toward the dogcatcher again. He'd returned to the steps, but noticed us returning, and again did his strategic approach. Having no choice, I walked right up to him, complete with my brother, the married couple, and the dogs. The only other person on the beach had stayed up at Graveyards, and I did her the favor of taking the heat off of her dogs.

"Your dogs were off leash." The guy was big, easily 6 foot 5, probably 250 pounds, and somehow his giant black cop boots were made all the bigger because of his tight-fitting green polyester issue pants. I could tell from the very beginning he had every intention of writing me a ticket.

Instead of keeping my mouth shut, I decided I'd quibble with him instead.

"Yes, but they're on now, as you can see."

"But they were off leash—I saw you put the leash on."

"Yes, but they're on leash now, and there's absolutely nobody on the beach."

"That doesn't matter. The leash law is 24-7."

"Dude. It's almost raining. It's cold. It's windy. There's nobody on the beach besides us. Come on." I reached out and gave him a broad handed pat on the side of his shoulder. "Come on."

He reached for his radio, crooked over his other shoulder, and blatantly said, "Requesting backup."

"Backup?" I asked, incredulous. "You must be joking."

"We'll wait for the sheriff."

I decided then and there that I was going to exercise my civil right to resist arrest, even if the arrest was only a dog ticket. I'd known from the second he walked down the beach that I wasn't going to get out of a ticket. And now he was calling the sheriff. What the hell did he think I was going to do, attack him with my doofous dogs?

I proceeded to walk south toward Miramar, not waiting for the sheriff, even though I saw the car drive toward the steps as I was walking south. I slinked along just against the Biltmore wall, and my married couple friends later told me he'd gotten out of the sheriff's car to look over the wall at my progress.

As I reached Hammonds, about half a mile from Miramar, (still having passed nobody on the beach), I debated taking the public access trail or sticking to the beach. The whole way my brother was berating me for having walked off, telling me how I should have kissed ass. How things would have gone much better had I not sassed to the dog patrol. He didn't want to understand that the guy was going to give me a ticket no matter what, which is why I figured lipping off to the guy wouldn't have made an iota of difference.

As I stood at the trailhead, I saw the dog patrol guy walking up from Miramar, along with two sheriffs. Two.

We met, and the sheriffs, straight out of Deputy Kamp, immediately assumed the Spaghetti Western stance: feet shoulder width apart, with a slight bend at the knee on the leg with the gun. There hands twitched mere inches above their gun holsters, ready to unclip the snaps at a moment's provocation.

"Do you want to go to jail?" One of them asked, authoritatively, in a deep voice, expressing each syllable and accenting 'jail' as he'd spoken it in italics. Like I'd never heard the word and needed elucidation.

I looked at them both. Their oversized cop glasses. Their freshly pressed uniforms. Their minty-fresh bootcamp "got-your-back" posturing. I glanced down at the two clueless dogs (on leashes), who were probably wondering why these three gentlemen had all gotten out of their cars, and gotten their boots sandy to harass one harmless dude on a windy, damp, unpopulated beach. They just wanted a scooby snack.

"Not particularly."

They explained in no uncertain terms that the dog catcher has as much authority as a cop (they do, I looked it up), and that by my walking off I was officially resisting arrest. They asked why I hadn't awaited their arrival. I said something lame like the dog catcher had been unclear as to whether he was issuing a ticket, and I didn't know why he was calling for backup, and the dogs needed their medicine, so I'd walked on. I apologized to the dog catcher, and told him I'd meant no disrespect.

He nodded and asked for my ID. I told him I'd left it in the car (it was in my back pocket) and gave him my name.

Deputy One immediately called my name in. And we waited. And waited.

My brother, meanwhile, was dressed in his usual black, with his long hair and lanky posture. He had a cellphone and his gargle of keys creating a menacing looking shape in his pocket.

After he'd spent several minutes prior to our current encounter berating me for not kissing the cop's ass, he put on his sarcastic hat, doing to the sheriffs exactly what I'd done. Talking lip.

"It's a cell phone."

"Would you mind taking it out of your pocket?"

"Do you need to make a phone call?"

"What?"

"Do you need to make a call?" He took it slowly from his pocket, mocking the sheriff with his gun-like cell phone.

The call in came back, and both sheriffs immediately renewed their edgy stance as the operator informed them that they could find no Jessie Bellinger.

"Are you sure you don't have any aliases?" the sheriff asked, hoping I'd give him my Mexican pseudonym from my crack slinging days of crossing the border under protection of the night.

"I don't have an 'I' in my name."

They called in again, and after a fifteen minute wait (it was a Sunday waiting list) they confirmed I was clean. The dog catcher gave me my $120 ticket.

"Wonderful doing business with you gentlemen," I said, snidely. "If you'd like, maybe you can sit around all week until I come back next Thursday with the dogs again. Apparently you don't have anything better to do but track dangerous dogwalkers through the raging, gang-ravaged streets of Montecito."

They gave us a comfortable distance as we walked back, but just enough to let us know that they were still on to us.

The beauty of it was climbing into the dog's owner's vehicle: a clean, Lexus SUV. Hoodlums, us.

I've seen that same dogcatcher standing around on the Butterfly steps, on sunnier days, when hundreds of people are walking their dogs, all of them off leash. He does nothing. What irks me the most is that I can't do anything, except write this. I've got your leash hanging right here, Mr. Dogcatcher Man. I hope you step in poop.

Silent Readers

I've always wondered just how many people read these posts, or anybody's posts, because 99 percent of the time, there are no comments.

Since there are no comments, I just assumed nobody was reading my genius.

This apparently is not the case. Silent readers exist, lurking just outside the reading radar, checking in periodically on the blog yet afraid, or timid, or perhaps even mildly illiterate; thus, no comments.

My buddy ted has a site Stone Cold Pimpin' which is ridiculously more advanced than this simple little batch of excerpts.

Inconstancy

I can't even begin to create, due to a "job" I was working on over the holidays. The lady could do nothing but change her mind every twenty seconds or so.

She settled on payment for my hours done, so we're at zero. She then said we'll put the job on hold.

As my stepdad said, I may have been fired the same day I quit.

Kong Is Racist?

Admittedly, I never thought of Lord of the Rings or Narnia as allegories for the Bible until the recent spat of articles on the subject, and I haven't seen the original King Kong since I was a mere scrub of a boy, but Kong as a depiction of the black man raping a white woman?

I guess.

If Aragorn is Christ, and Azlan is Christ, I suppose Kong could be "the black man." The funny thing about Peter Jackson's latest version is that Andy Serkis plays Kong, and from what I've seen, Andy is a white man. Does that mean that all white men aspire to be angry, oversized black men?

The movie poster for the 1976 version of King Kong shows Jessica Lange in the palm of Kong, with his giant hand coming down from above as she cradles his finger. I have to admit, the profile lends a startling similarity to a black man's cock and balls.

Was Star Wars another depiction of a black man (Darth Vader, voiced by James Earl Jones, and with a helmut like a penis) trying to take over the whiny little white dude's world, namely, his own son Luke?

Not to mention Kong finally climbs to the symbol of the white man's status: the Empire State Building, perhaps signifying that the angry black man is still just a little bigger than the biggest the white man has to offer.

Then again, maybe it's just a story of a big ape who dies.

The other argument is the pool table, where the white ball controls all colors, and in the final standoff drops the most elusive and dangerous color of all: black.

These are interesting arguments, but are they valid? Research shall show.

The Culture Box

Laptop computers are nothing new, and yet they are the device which attaches with a frequently more prolific wi-fi umbilical cord to the world.

It's interesting, if one thinks briefly of the history of information. How the scribes in Egyptian days created language (after the carving of stone) and the data was carried thither and yon over trade routes and through castles and over massive land holdings in order to determine how many cows, concubines, and corn the monarch might have.

Now we have laptops, complete with their own energy source, and with the proper location the ability to connect instantly to just about any possible type of information one can imagine.

These culture boxes are, according to the psychological argument, the end of personal interaction. This is actually quite a contradiction. Think about it, with computers and internet access and email and instant messaging and sites like My Space propogating peoples pictures and thoughts and bands and pets; how is this the end of personal interaction?

There has never been more personal action.

It's a culture unto itself, this internet phenomenon. Do you have your box?

Everything Is Slightly Unbearable

There come days when nothing is as it should be, when everybody and everything is in your way.

Waiting in line at the gas station is a deplorable waste of time. You sit there, idling, or with your engine turned off, and finally the old farmer guy with his giant F250 informs you five minutes later that he's still got to fill his second tank.

You drive around the building to wait in the other line. Suddenly the truck in front of the F250 pulls away, leaving a spot you could back into, had the jackass behind you not pulled so damn close he might as well be attached to your trailer hitch.

The man in front of you with the Cadillac finishes pumping. Stoked, you think. But no, he is one of the three people on the planet who still pay cash, and he's physically debilitated--maybe even diabetic. Instead of first moving his car, he leaves it as is and ambles over to the paymart. The day wears on, all the more exacerbating due to the lack of sunglasses over your eyes. Everything is impossibly bright.

Finally Old Man Gimp pulls away, narrowly sliding by the kid with his brand new GMC Sierra, who winces as the man drives by, walking over to check if the old man has enough room. Puss.

The gas finally pumped, (and realizing you had less than half a gallon left) you seek to exit away from the main light, only to be bombarded by oncoming traffic on the "sneaky" way out. Carefully, you assess every driver's head as you navigate the lot, realizing that not one of them has any spatial knowledge of anything beyond the front window of the car.

The Big O!

This from the New York Times:
Oh, Oprah, 20 Years of Talk, Causes and Self-Improvement
"Ms. Winfrey has released a six-disc DVD collection of her greatest moments - a maudlin, self-congratulatory video memoir that is entirely deserved and mesmerizing to watch.
The whole extravaganza is embarrassingly lavish and over the top, and not nearly enough."

I don't know. Oprah appeals to women, and to Dr. Phil. She is easily the modern world's Johnny Carson. The four times I had to sit through her shows I was with women who were on the rag. Oprah is undeniably rag material. This does not make her less important, nor is it meant to belittle those ladies who feel comforted by Oprah in their time of bleed, but I can't stand watching the woman for more than four minutes.

This may be an abitrary time thrown out by me, with no psychological underpinnings other than it makes for a nice round number for the sake of a narrative, but it is a very close estimate to the amount of time it takes me to want to run from the television.

Oprah is a force, there is no doubt, but she is also self-important. The fact that she is the living embodiment of a rags to riches story verges on saccharine. I only hope I can write a novel before she retires that she deems worthy of the Oprah book club.

I'm torn between a deep revulsion of the woman and a profound respect. A friend of mine used to call her the whale, back when she was a colored woman. Now that she's homogenized herself, I might even consider her sexy, as long as I don't have to spend more than four minutes with her.

Three Holes

An ad campaign by Pentel (pentel.com) claims their new pen, the impulse, is a vehicle for the best use of three holes since ... the bowling ball. Clever sexual innuendo there.

Additionally, the ad finally ends with an animated line drawing of a person grooving in excited, sexual exhortations, with the pen hung around their neck as a lanyard--thus the use of one of the three holes. The dancing gyrator is mildly ripped off from Apple's iPod silhouette campaign.

Anyway, I've always liked pens, and in general utensils created for scribing, but I never knew just how incredibly perverted a pen could be. I might get one simply to spend hours with my newfound collection of holes. Think of the possibilities.

As of this posting, even Google didn't have an image of the pen. Apparently Pentel is hoping to keep the pen in your hands only.

Helping Hands

There is a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts called Helping Hands (helpinghandsmonkeys.org)which provides highly trained capuchin monkeys for handicapped people. This is awesome. At the same time I want to laugh. Monkeys are so badass and clever it must bring a tear to the eyes of the 'patients' every time their monkey turns on the light or picks up that dropped paper or brings them a glass of water.

I hope if I'm ever unfortunate enough to need assistance that I will be the lucky recipient of a capuchin monkey. I would call him Chico.

Paying for Content

Trying to Wean Internet Users From Free
The New York Times is trying to make up for declines in its traditional revenue by charging for portions of its Web site.

I find this slightly amusing. The NY Times has a portion of its online content as subscriber only. Recently, under this new pay content, demarcated by a nifty orange "T", is an article on just that subject--namely, how the NY Times is trying to charge for content.

The catch is that as interesting as the article looks, one can only read it if one is already a subscriber. Thus, paying to read an article about paying to read articles.

Is that ironic? I'm not sure. Dave Eggers (who apparently used to be a regular writer for salon.com) had some "author's notes" in the back of his book "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". In the notes, which are written in about a five point font, just big enough to cause chronic squinting, he goes on about the overuse of the "ironic" situations one might confront. I don't even want to try to encapsulate the breathtaking spin he put on ironic, but he offers alternative words for almost any situation that people would feel inclined to call ironic, but would be better served by those alternative words.

It makes you realize how much of a cliche "ironic" truly is. So, is an article about paying to read that is accessible only by those who have already paid ironic? Maybe, but more likely it's genius marketing ploy.

Blog Unknown

Hmm. It seems strange that a blog program created by Google, (namely, the one you're reading), has a spellcheck that offers alternatives to the word 'blog' precisely because it doesn't recognize the term.
Alternatives for 'blog': bloc, Bloch, blows, bloke, blocky

Junk Mail

It seems junk mail is as prevalent as belly button lint these days. The junk is so 'there' that my internet service even has a junk mail attached to every regular mail I get. (Although technically this is a virus on the server side, which they have yet to address.)
My favorite junk mails are those that have the literary drivel at the bottom of the message. Gibberish designed to get past the spam blockers. For every message I block, another three arrive, seeking to sell me watches, Viagra, real estate, stocks, or offering closeout wholesale prices on old software.
My other favorites are those clever mails that borrow from somebody else's email, and send you a message claiming the undiscovered fun of sharing pictures or text messaging with your friends. I mistakenly went on one of those one time, put in my first name, and the site immediately filled in the rest of the blanks with all of my information, then froze and disappeared. I later checked with the person who I thought had sent the original message, but they claimed to have done no such thing.
Now I look on my blog, which no one reads but me, to discover I have a comment on a post I left back in June. Joy! I thought. Someone read my genius. But no, the comment was junk. One of those stock offerings where it starts at 25 cents, and they claim it'll go up to $1.25 overnight.
Didn't anyone see Boiler Room? Are there people out there who are duped by these solicited scams? Are they making money off of these phenomenal stocks?
Another junk mail I've been getting is supposedly from Paypal and eBay. Each of those sites sends a realistic message claiming my account is about to dry up, or somebody has messed with my identity and I'd better go quick and give them all my information again, just so they can confirm that I actually am who I say I am. The catch lies in the final warning of the message:

If you do not respond within 48 Hours! you risk the chance of losing your account.

They almost got me with that. But when I failed to respond within the dangerous 48 hour limit, I got another message with that very same warning. I've received them regularly every few days, each with that harried 48 Hour! boosting fear at the bottom of the message.

I'm still here. And they're still out to get me.

Dress Shirts and Danishes

I dreamt of the Kona side of Hawaii, except I was in Santa Barbara working at the Business College. I was starving and thirsty, and halfway through the class I realized I wasn't wearing a shirt. I wasn't naked, just shirtless.
I gave the class some assigments, and went out to buy a shirt. Unfortunately, it was only 9 in the morning, which meant nothing would be open. On my way out, the dean of the school asked me to get some danishes on my time out. This was especially weird for two reasons:
The first was he didn't mention I was shirtless (and it was at this point in the dream I became aware for the first time that I was shirtless--the early mention in the first paragraph was for narrative purposes); the second weird reason was he wasn't at all concerned I was leaving the campus, and my students, unattended in the classroom.
I hitched a ride to Sears, because for some reason my truck wasn't working. Obviously the store wasn't open, so I went to get the danishes. As I stood in line, several frat boys got offended that I was shirtless, even though all the workers and everybody else seemed oblivious to the fact. I ordered a giant sugar cookie, and the hot little worker girl put it on a plate, which one of the frat boys started to eat with a fork.
I called out the girl about misplacing the cookie, but she didn't care. I confronted the frat boy, but he ignored me. Then, as is sometimes the case with dreams, I fought him and his three friends, or I had a verbal altercation, or I smashed the cookie in his face, or I screamed at the hot cookie girl.
Finally I stood in the checkout line, and some lady cut in front of me. Seven different altercations took place, and each time I put a raisin english muffin in my bag of danishes. My bill came out to $82.95. What? More altercations ...
This all took an hour and a half, and Sears was still closed, or they didn't have any shirts that didn't need ironing. I drove my truck (which I now had and worked) back to work, still shirtless, which still didn't seem to matter.
The danishes went untouched, as I'd lost my appetite. The dusty bag now sits on the back table with the danishes untouched inside, or not.

The Four-Minute Bike Ride

I pulled my bike off the hanger, lubed the chain, and began the task of gathering my bike gear. It was so much easier when we didn't have gloves, clipless shoes, padded bike shorts, synthetic workout shirts, and hip-packs to hold my iPod. As I was adjusting the headphones, running the cord up my back, I forgot the pod was still attached to the wire, sitting on my bed. I turned, and flung the pod onto my cement floor three feet down. Oh christ.
It still worked, and I remembered reading that the little buggers can take a fall or two. This was good, because as I was trying to zip up the crusty zipper on my hip-pack, with my pod in it, I dropped it. Goddamnit. About an hour later I had my gear on, after digging through my unused socks for the special bike socks, rifling through my athletic wear for the padded shorts, and the same for the shirt.
Finally, I got on my bike, after wiping the crusted dirt off my helmet. Careening down the driveway I noticed my brakes felt especially squishy. I made it into the shade of the canyon, with the intention of adjusting the handlebar tweakers to tighten the cable. I then squeezed the brake, testing for tension, and instead broke the brake cable.
I rode back home, and upon reaching my front yard looked at my little bikometer. Four minutes. Sixty-seven hundredths of a mile. I hung my now decrepit bike back up, removed the gear, and got in my truck. At least I didn't drop my iPod again.

Just a Minute

It is a common sighting to see people in Montecito go about their business as if everyone within their general vicinity were on their payroll, and all the roads were merely an extension of their private driveway.
A lady was driving her brand new, 745i BMW along Coast Village Road. Her car was in the middle of the intersection near Bank of America and Chevron; already she was exhibiting symptoms that indicated her complete lack of regard for anybody but herself.
Coincidentally, we both pulled into the Montecito Von's parking lot at the same time. I parked, and as I was walking to the mailbox near the pharmacy (which does not carry condoms, by the way) I overheard her say, "I'll just be a minute. Why don't you drive around the parking lot a time or two while you're waiting for the spot?"
The situation was this: she had parked in one of the two handicapped spots, and an old man in his Chevy Tahoe, with his blue handicapped rearview mirror placard displayed for all to see was genially trying to get the clearly non-handicapped lady to get out of his spot.
She ambled in to the pharmacy, her back turned to the man.
He parked in a regular spot, across the lot, and walked over to stand in front of her BMW. He was livid, and visibly shaking, staring at her license plate. Obviously, he was running the situation through his mind of calling the cops to report this rude lady to the sheriffs. In the end his sense of decency prevailed. I watched as he walked over to his car, opened up the back, and gingerly placed the bouquet of flowers he'd just purchased on what must have been his wife's wheelchair. It was obvious he was making a point to anybody watching that he did, in fact, have a legitimate excuse for parking in the handicapped zone.
He finally got in to the truck, his back hunched with age and tension, shaking his head. I believe that confrontation will last him a week's worth of griping. Had he waited for the lady to exit the store, it would have taken much longer than a minute. While she left him hanging, I'm willing to bet he had her minute hanging.

Dreams of Nightmare Jobs

I've been broke for most of my life. Ten years ago it was a chore to dredge up enough money to go out for a decent meal. Nothing's changed. I think I might be the problem. Then again, I've also been told I don't fit in. Not fitting in means I've got to somehow come up with my own means of success. Somehow I don't think this success will arrive in my lap by sitting around on my unfinished patio reading pithy books about traveling families: The Laments.
My stepdad bought me a wrought iron table for my patio recently, because the winds took my plastic table and completely demolished it. The new one's nice. Anyway, I had to pick it up from the neighbors, who then mentioned a job as a book keeper for a local tile company. That night I had a dream about the job.
It started by walking in to the dark, air-conditioned building. The wife of the owner was a good-looking curly blonde of average height, with a perfectly proportioned nose. She took me in to the office, which was a converted closet, where the computer sat underneath some overhanging clothes.
The computer was small, like an original MacII, the kind where the screen is about the size of a modern-day in-dash GPS. The brain was sluggish, and they were still operating with floppy discs. The screen was blurry, and the program was nothing I'd ever heard of. She mentioned that the dress-code was from some obscure clothing line that fit, fashion-wise, somewhere between the Gap and Old Navy.
I sat down to punch in a few numbers, staring at the minute, glacoma-inducing screen with dread that hung over my shoulders like the dark rack of clothing just over my head. Within minutes I stood up and told her I couldn't do this unless they purchased at least a new screen. She said it wasn't in the budget. I told her the job wasn't in my budget. Which is why I'm still broke.