My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Did you see storage wars last night – the show where people bid on abandoned lockers? I’ll catch it with on demand.
There was another load of old pot at the dump. The pot clubs sell edibles like brownies, lollipops, cupcakes, ice cream, whatever. People are trying to use their food stamp debit cards to purchase them. Hey, Medicare covers Viagra. Same dif.

The liver performs a vital detoxification function in the human body. It’s like the filter on your work computer and your water faucet rolled into one keeping all kinds of toxins from hanging around and “shittin’ up” the place. Ever try to deliver a sliver of liver in a flivver? Quiver inhibiter shimmers inna minivan.

If there were an authorial liver on this post, that would have been filtered out – thus illustrating the importance of this hidden organ.

Are you with me? I was with my girlfriend – work related dinner at a fancy hotel downtown. The Palace. Big chandeliers, wide carpeted hallways. Open bar. Who has an open bar at a liver research fundraiser? The type of function where there’s a sit down dinner of salmon over rice pilaf that’s been waiting for us in a warmer since I was home picking out shoes. I won’t name names.

My date was late so I hung back after the bar closed with a glass of white wine…heard its great with fish. I got talking with a guy who called himself a volunteer doorman. Turns out he’d received a liver through the organization hosting the fund raiser. I dropped my glass.

“My body rejected my own liver, it happens occasionally. In my late twenties it finally gave out, my brother in law donated 70% of his. The liver and the skin are the only organs that can regenerate themselves. His grew back inside him, and it grew back inside of me,” he said.

I needed another drink but my broken glass was at my feet. How does a liver know when to stop growing inside of you? How much damage can you cause before it gets mad and quits? And if it keeps regenerating, why do you need your brother in law’s?

“Scar tissue builds up and blood can’t flow through, which is cirrhosis. Then it stops regenerating,” he explained. Then you get a new one. Or you die. 1 in 5 folks waiting for a new one die before a spare comes on the market.

The volunteer doorman with a stranger’s liver didn’t tell me that last bit, the giant powerpoint presentation did, while dessert and coffee were served. Did you know a skin cell can be reverted back to a stem cell? I did, by the end of my three berry fruit tart.

The neighborhood lost a fixture to liver failure this week as well, which is odd timing. He was only 44, liked to hang around the bar and shoot pool but didn’t drink. So, without really having known him, I’d still like to wish him well, where ever he is now.

At the flea market, saw a guy who took the metal edge from Bic lighters and ringed his hoodie with them.

I’m not gonna call myself stupid. I’m not stupid. But sometimes I learn too late. Too late to be called smart.

On tv, Storage Wars shows a group of people who pay a little money for a storage locker’s contents, then they resell items for a higher price. My tv show, if I were to have one, would track how much money I lose. How much I could have made if I was a little more aware.
200 chop sticks came my way, free of charge. So I brought them to the flea market. I figured maybe someone collects them. I charged a guy 3 bucks a pair and he bought 5 pair. An easy 15 dollar profit. But what if I’d known they were ivory? That people pay a lot more than 3$ a pair for them? Can it be called a loss, even when a profit is made? Can it be called stupidity? Or an opportunity to learn about the world of collecting chopsticks?

Met a guy who wanted me to sell a few things at the flea market for him. He hopped in his 1935 MG convertible and headed over. Then he broke down. The old Hauler! towed him home.

It may seem like you need a pair to split, but even one can be divided.

When you multiply by half, you divide in two. Multiplying is not obligated to create more. 10 loaves of bread multiplied by 1/2 a loaf of bread is five loaves of bread. You don’t have to be Jesus to make less out of more. You have to understand multiplication’s dark side.

.5 is like saying half. Unless it’s .04 which is half way drunk. Half in the bag is .10 or more. Think of it in terms of labor. If you were to work a whole day, but worked half assed, you didn’t get a whole day’s work done. You watched some YouTube, texted friends, and created a little added value for your employer.

Ever heard of a halfie? Not quite hard, not totally soft. It’s a diminished state. If you were flaccid you wouldn’t be thinking about sex and you could get some housework done. If you were hard you’d be busy. But this halfie has you stuck, embarrassed to get out of bed, afraid to make a move.

Not all halves are bad. Every morning millions choose half and half (although that sounds like a whole) or half decaf half regular. Sometimes half throttle or half joking is just the speed a situation requires to avoid a wreck.

Half time is a chance to reflect on performance much like midlife crises are the wake up call it’s half over. These are important moments. Thanks for reading.

How do you do laundry when a club sandwich of junk is on top?

We were hired to stick all the junk in this old guy’s yard around the back of his shed, out of view of the neighbor who was selling her place. She was paying us. “I don’t want to be able to see his crap from the back porch,” she told me.

Tires, scaffolding, Christmas lights, a dirt bike frame, an Igloo cooler full of rancid water, blue tarps sun-rotted and flapping like the fringe on a rocker’s jacket, just so much stuff piled at random it was hard to walk through the yard.

“I’m not changing my lifestyle for no body, fuck that bitch. But she offered to pay for you guys to haul this stuff off, so let’s do it,” he explained.

It was an awkward situation. Ryan helped the first day. Stepping in the hidden piles of dog crap everywhere bummed him out. The second day Jeff came along. He hates working with me too.

Jeff started rapping, “I’m the master rapper and I’m here to say.” We were dragging a differential out from under pine needles and over to a pallet to store it off the ground.

The crazy old man was trying to get his chain saw started and hollered, “That’s a split differential for a 84 Camaro, it’s worth a lot of money!” Rusty water poured out over the mud caked in the housing. We had been ignoring his description of every rusty hunk of abused iron we dug from the dirt for over an hour.

“Everybody had ‘something to say’ back then. That was when the whole world went hip hop. Fruity Pebbles ads with Barney Rubble rapping? It was terrible. Awful. Thank god it’s over.”

Fact checking proved Jeff correct.

Working with Jeff helps me make sense of the normal world, not this junk man’s one I so fully abide by. He’s worked at record stores and movie theaters most of his life, has blu ray and cable. He knows pop culture. He can sing the jingles, he can dance the Hammer Dance. That’s like walking the walk and talking the talk but hipper.

A world that went hip hop seems like a transmission from Mars where we stand. Is this really San Francisco? Trees layered with ivy block out all neighbors, tall weeds hide VW fenders, a cardboard box serves as a belligerent bedroom window.

“You can see through his house,” Jeff says, noting the vast rot that has eaten away at the exterior. By the time we finally drove away we had towed a truck with no brakes through an intersection, found his weed, fallen down, and found a spot of empathy for this guy who was unable to let go. Actually, Jeff hated him.

Quick To-Don’t list:

Don’t support democracy in North Africa if gas keeps going up 20 cents a night.

Don’t bother blowing my nose until this cold is over. I’m bored and it’s starting to hurt.

Don’t forget to look up why I should remember the Alamo.

That one was dumb.

Here’s a quote from Rusty Sunshine earlier today that might fit.
“Tell her you don’t want to marry someone you already been fuckin’.”

That should be enough. Anyone want to add one?

It was laying on the bus seat. Empty. People scoffed at the idea of legalizing marijuana. “How can you sell pot in a store?” It’s pretty easy. Get over it America, and make it happen.

Look at it! Not the dead man’s dirty vhs tape, but the photo itself! The technology that is working correctly! Ryan came over and reset all my permissions and did other things he couldn’t explain to me and once again the internet as I know it has images. So all of us who like looking at pictures should thank Ry. Thanks Ry! (I’ll pay you too)

Guy tried to sell me an AK 47 at the flea market. Gotta get there early for the illegal shit.

This flea market is like a lost lover. We both love going through piles of old stuff, sneezing over the same moldy books, laughing at the same ugly children in school pictures – I blame myself for waiting so long to commit. Those aspirations of wealth and society that was the promise of junk mail catalogs where I once worked kept me from admitting it out loud. I want to wake up at 4:30 in the morning and drive to the market and spread crap out on a blanket. I want to argue over two dollars with people from China, I want to sell 1970′s Pyrex bowls to Japanese women who take them home on a plane and resell them in Tokyo. I want to know the buying habits of all these cultures, watch the micro economies of shoe fashion, kitchen trivets and lamp shades rise and wane.

Meanwhile, across town it was Oscar Party at Doug’s. Quarter bets on who wins each category. Cliff was providing commentary.

“Oprah is strapped into that dress. Her girdle’s gonna snap and slices of pizza will come flying out.”

Toy Story 3 is the only movie I’ve seen this year. I lost a lot of money betting on Woody.

Throwing concrete rubble in a bucket so the guys could spread sand around the new pipe laid out for a bar going in an old building downtown. Gonna be a Cajun restaurant with a beautiful curving bar but the old floor was rotten. Everything got torn out, right down to the subfloor poured in 1906 when it was the Standard Shirt manufacturing company. These odd chunks of iron were in among the jackhammered scraps. Makes you think treasure is just really old garbage. Then again, treasure isn’t gonna be thrown away again when it’s discovered, like this rusty jetsam will be. For a minute it is wonderful to hold, to imagine what it could have been used for, what guys were eating for lunch a hundred years ago, what it smelled like outside in the afternoon, what they said to each other when a woman walked by. Then the reality kicks in that no one will pay for this old twisted metal except the scrapyard, so it gets thrown in that corner of the truck and tomorrow it’ll be on its way to a new life.

Three old bricks turned up, Jeff was notified.

We haven’t had a Pilipino minute for a long time, so let’s take a minute to learn about the influence of this culture on the bay area today.

There’s a tradesman out there driving around a white van with “Rooter Bong” painted on the side. He’s a plumber, offering to clear the clogs in your pipes. Who would imagine Mr. Rooter Bong isn’t a pot head?

My expert source told me “bong” is a common nickname for guys in this lush island studded land. Using the future phone she gave him a call and confirmed the man on the answering machine was speaking in a very provincial Tagalog (Filipino) accent. Case closed.

It might be interesting to have an interview with Rooter Bong and find out how this double entendre has helped or hurt his business. Anyone care?