9.13.14

I have received some pretty nice notes this week. Apparently people really enjoy it when I am miserable. Most of us can relate.

Got this from a friend the other day:

...One curious thing I did notice as I drove 4 x 6 hours up/down 395, a whole friggen day...in a week recently, was how many "down on their luck", older, guys and gals were standing by the side of the road with destination signs. I saw maybe 8 or 10 over the 4 separate drives. Maybe I've seen 2 over the past 35 years. A 75 year old man with a cart walking down 395 in 105 degree weather. What the hell?????? Makes me so sad for society and feel so bad about our dam ass greed.

Its funny but I have noticed the same thing. I see the same guy parked outside of Bluewater Trading every year, with the same sign, no gas, no job, need work. Unfortunately lots of cardboard sign holders with small kids in tow. Many more young people now out on the street too, staking out their respective freeway exits and corners. I guess it's a job, just not much of a living. Many have plainly given up.

Mom, I'm home!

Trying to figure out the new millennial economy is tough. The tattoo and piercing thing might be cresting, not a lot of skin around left to fill. The big holes in the ear things are getting sewn up at a rapid rate, the whistle they make is obnoxious when you are driving the car with the top down. I believe that the proper term for the apparatus are gauges.  Eventually such body modifications run into a sad law of diminishing returns, in a land where everybody is increasingly hip, is anybody truly hip?

So what are we left with? Obviously porn. Vape stores have potential, but they maybe have six months left before I think they crash. Sign twirling is always good, especially if you are still reasonably spry, apparently twirlers have two available approaches, amphetamine driven and super bored and laconic.

Long as there is a new subdivision of KB Homes popping up somewhere nearby and an anonymous strip mall or two, you are pretty much guaranteed year round work if this is your chosen path.

Unless of course, the unions get involved. International Sign Twirlers of America, may I please see your union card?

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Certainly can't make it as an artist, photographer, writer or musician, all content must be free now, the people have demanded it. There's a brilliant 15 year old in Pacoima who has nothing better to do than bang on his keyboard all day and he is giving it away, so you better get with the program.

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I am sick, about to venture into extreme heat with a fever. Next thing you know I will be hooked up to some intravenous device at an emergency room in Deming or something. Spent an hour puking last night, sweated buckets loading the van this morning. Going to go home and sleep for a couple hours, open a can of soup. Take off early.

Lena says I never smile for pictures.

Call me on the road.