My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Glen the carpenter’s getting older. The bones get weaker, the hair gets grayer. He caught his right foot in the compressor cord, and his next step caught his left foot up and down he went, ribs into the arm of a couch.

Cracked a rib. Couldn’t even laugh at himself like he usually does, it hurt to simply breath.

The natural motion of walking requires swinging of the arms and a slight torsion of the rib cage. That hurt him as well.

Reduced to hobbling but determined to take a weekend off and visit Visalia with a friend, they headed for Amtrack.

Have you heard of Visalia? Probably not. It’s in the valley. Known for its onions, which means its not really well known at all. Very few of us care what town they come from. Just fry ‘em up.

Glenn’s friend Brando was born and raised among the onions and took Glenn to the bars.

I wasn’t given a description of the particular joint where they met up with Brando’s high school friend, no, Glenn was imitating the barely verbal Wookie-like moan/howl of the new companion. He had Muscular Dystrophy. It can come on later in life and slowly deteriorates one’s body.

Let’s call him Thomas. Thomas had to lean forward in his wheelchair with his head cocked sideways to get the straw in his mouth and sip his beer.

Thomas and Brando had grown up skateboarding and playing music together but Glenn was meeting a drunk in a wheelchair demanding a trip to his coke dealer. They finished their beers and went outside.

Thomas was describing large circles in the parking lot, sheparding Glenn as he gingerly set each foot down lightly so as not to disturb his rib cage with a severe jolt.

There was, according to Glenn, more incomprehensible howling that seemed like simple mockery at his hobbling gate.

To be honest, the story got sidetracked while we installed the replacement refrigerant on the ice machine at the bar we were working at. I never did find out if someone had to help Thomas get the drugs up his nose. Someone misplaced the elbow and I went looking under the stools and that’s how it is in life. Stories get interrupted.

Later my Dad called to tell me the Chief of Police had been shot and killed in my sleepy hometown during a drug raid on a steroid dealer.

I don’t know if there is a connection there or not. People do like drugs though.

If we are all one, and mathematically 1 is comprised of many parts that can be reduced away, then truly God is love.

I’ve practically retired now. Make a few phone calls, heat up the tea water.

Welcome to Mixed Nuts

If the ad says, “1 in 5 Americans is disabled,” am I wrong to call bad grammar and not give any money?

At the grocery store there’s a tip cup for the crippled, or rather, disabled. Crippled would be a vulgar phrase. But it provided alliteration.

The jar had a fancy image and that quote up there. Shouldn’t it be,”1 in 5 Americans ARE disabled”?

Where’s one of my old English teachers? Don’t any of them care I blog?

Magnets. They are used as storage devices. You write your shopping list down and stick it to the refrigerator. Magnet.

Magnet. You swipe your credit card at the store and that little black strip with your bank information? Magnet.

Magnetic tape inside 8 tracks and cassettes, VHS tape, reel to reel recordings. Information written down by arranging little bits of iron in binary code so you can listen to music anywhere. Magnetically.

Computer. Hard drive. Advanced level rare earth magnet.

It’s all the same thing. Magnets.

Pulled from wikipedia- an anecdote about the invention of magstripes.

“The process of attaching a magnetic stripe to a plastic card was invented by IBM in 1960 under a contract with the US government for a security system. Forrest Parry, an IBM Engineer, had the idea of securing a piece of magnetic tape, the predominant storage medium at the time, to a plastic card base. He became frustrated because every adhesive he tried produced unacceptable results. The tape strip either warped or its characteristics were affected by the adhesive, rendering the tape strip unusable. After a frustrating day in the laboratory, trying to get the right adhesive, he came home with several pieces of magnetic tape and several plastic cards. As he walked in the door at home, his wife Dorothea was ironing and watching TV. She immediately saw the frustration on his face and asked what was wrong. He explained the source of his frustration: inability to get the tape to “stick” to the plastic in a way that would work. She said, “Here, let me try the iron.” She did and the problem was solved. The heat of the iron was just high enough to bond the tape to the card.”

Youtube videos that show you how to maximize the profit from scrapping a computer emphasize segregating metals.

Aluminum heat sinks in one pile, plastic coated copper wire in another. The internal cooling fan can be sold as an electric motor. Gold skim coats on the “fingers” of certain wire connections and platinum on the mirror finish of the hard drive’s internal optical component.

So many elements come together to create a google search. It feels more like plastic, glass and magic to the average user. Metal is the magic.

Anytime junkman gather, they talk of scores. Much like football fans talking in points for victories, remembering good plays and bad games. Junkmen are private though. Solo artists perhaps. Not team players. More like distance runners than basketball players. They compete against each other every Saturday morning, sprinting from garage sale to garage sale, sunday they line up for the flea market gun to fire and they hurtle through the darkness over rolled up rugs trundled together with string and they pull open boxes with two hands by the light of a headlamp.
They push against one another like horse jockeys on the rails and they cuss each other like trash talk you’d hear in Harlem ball courts.

Pat is one of those men. He specializes in wooden stringed instruments, British car parts and espresso machines.

Those are three categories with potentially high resale value and he is a master craftsmen, mechanic and barrista.
However, he will strike at any good deal. Recently he recounted a sale of items belonging to a man evicted from a catholic charities rooming house.

Perhaps it’s turned to legend and characters have been given supernatural powers, but to hear it from Pat, nuns in full uniform presided over the sidewalk sale. He found a duffle bag with some jars he wanted to inspect, so holding it aloft he asked the price.
“2 dollars,” came the holy reply.
Pat is the kind of patient junkman who waits until he is home before fully investigating.
Inside the jars he found cocaine and rattling in the corner of the duffle bag was a ZZ Top coke spoon.
He did a fat rail and thanked the sisters.

A look in the backroom at mixed nuts

Just pissed in a storm drain while I was on the cellphone because the burger shop is sorry, no restroom. Went in to order and realized piss splatter was all over my shoes.

This is a dirty life and I’m not prepared.

Went to the bank to open a business account and had the business license in a frame I’d taken off the shop wall. Pulled out my pocket knife and found the Phillips head. Backed out them screws, parted the glass and handed the document to the woman.

My girlfriend calls me an animal. I guess so.

There’s a particular funk that comes over the cab of the truck after a few weeks so unique in odor it can only be one thing: dried and aged dump juice.

The tang of male cat urine, wet rust, decomposed cardboard and mushrooms, the muck of low tide and the mud from a stagnant pond, the whiff of an old unplugged refrigerator door opening, cheese induced flatulence – these are some of notes ringing in your nose when you sit in the truck.

Sign of the 80′s, the molded plastic internally lit advertisement. More often seen with a yellow background, here we have the white “hot boys” version.

Saw this getting lost in the southern reaches of Oakland. A long strip of Taquerias and old auto body shops, all worn and faded. Then we pass a new gray/black block building with the hells angels logo on it. Oakland headquarters. It looked impenetrable. No windows, steel doors. Will dared me to go knock and ask to see the gift shop.

Found the infamous Anton LeVey’s business card at the flea. He started the Church of Satan at the site where my local postal branch is today.

Looked out my window after a weekend of rain and someone tagged the truck. Why take a picture and show you? Why even mention it? Just a routine thing now. It doesn’t even make me mad. Just another line on the to-do list.

As far as the shop goes, by the time you figure 9% sales tax, 3% for the credit card company, 2 grand a month for rent and bills, the money spent on inventory, and the time spent watching the shop, I earn about 80 cents an hour. Then the IRS wants 30% of that.

None of this makes me mad anymore. I’ve learned to love my destroyer.

Is there a special name for car accidents involving all the same make? For instance here on Fulton we have two BMWs collided. Perhaps an “auto auto accident”?

In other thoughts, what kind of friends do you want? Here is one guideline: one who will try to break you out of jail but wouldn’t try to convince you to rob a bank.

It’s important to disrespect the law until you get caught. Then remember to act nice. Americans love renegades but they gotta have class.

Also, a friend who is so manly the question arises, “Does he have two penises?”. This is a good friend to have.

And if she’s a woman, you wonder if she’s so together she doesn’t even need one. Especially yours. This friend will be invaluable.

Found these photos on the ground at the dump and scooped them up for Chiraag. He came by the shop to get them and explained who this man is. Rajneesh, a guru from India in the 60′s who eventually created an ashram in Oregon in the 80′s. There were many problems with neighbors. For one thing, he advocated free love He owned over 90 Rolls Royces and imported homeless people to influence a local election. Things got weird.

While Chiraag explained all this to us, a woman came in the shop with her sister and they were from Santa Cruz and remembered when the group decided to stop wearing the orange robes similar to Hindu priests and went to purple.

“The thrift stores were full of orange clothing!”

That’s the great thing about having a store and inviting the public in. All these old things mean something more than we can tell just by looking at them or holding them. It’s the conversations they start that really make it interesting.