Will and I were weeding a patch of dirt, basically…about one foot by four feet in the middle of the city and found this snake. Was about a foot an a half long at most. A gopher snake I think they call them. I think I nicked him with my lopers, there was a good cut on the lower part of him.
photo posted from my iPhone
invisible angels riding motorcycles in the sky?
photo posted from my iPhone
If you’re having a bad day, it’s probably not fair to say, “At least I’m not like that guy,” and point at the guy on the stretcher with a smashed up car left in the middle of the road. How can that really cheer you up?
It happens though. I wonder why I’m still renting at my age instead of paying a mortgage, and then I say, “At least I’m not renting something in Oklahoma.” One of the steps to maturity is to not compare yourself that way. Let people be who they are, and be happy with yourself. Don’t laugh and shout “Sucks being you,” at the man in the neck brace as he’s lifted into the ambulance. You don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t suck to be him. Try and be happy with you.
I was doing some weeding this morning and pulled back some branches to reveal this major clump of shrooms. The gross thing about this job was crouching down trying to get at the roots and squishing a moldy damp poop from the owners dog. Multiple times.
Yesterday Sophia and I took my motorcycle up to Sacramento to look at a truck. It’s an International Loadstar, 1973. Had an aluminum box 14 feet long and lift gate to boot. The picture is just to give you a likeness as my search couldn’t turn up the original photo.
No snow in Sacramento. More like a hundred degrees frying my brain in my helmet.
Just didn’t have confidence the old thing would make it out alive from the two plus hour trip back home. At one point Sophia said she fell asleep on the back of the bike and it must have been then that I dreamed she was a balloon and had floated off the back. It was like I felt her let go, although she keeps her hands in my jacket pockets on the ride.
A passenger is a mighty responsibility on a motorcycle. As the miles went underneath our feet at 90 I pictured all kinds of accidents. The oddest one was turning to look over my shoulder and finding Sophia still holding on, but headless. As though somehow a branch or low wire or drunken duck had decapitated her and I hadn’t known. It was inspired by war stories from the Pacific, seeing a buddy floating in the water only to find his lower half missing from shark bite.
But she held on enough to make it home alive and now it’s time to go bed tonight. Good night. More landscaping tomorrow. Possibly a run to the scrap metal yard. I’ll hardly be able to sleep due to excitement.
yeah. feelin good. work. people call and I feel wanted. i find stuff in piles of garbage. found the thing you screw to the bottom of your door to stop breezes. and drafts. it’s an energy saver. been lookin for that. found a back brace. the velcro thing you strap around yourself. cuz i’m older now and my body gets hurt easy. but i forget to wear it. i found one and i’d just bought one. i hate buying things. always find the thing free i just bought. discouraging.
lookin at a truck tomorrow. some people have pets, i have trucks. gotta feed em, take em to the vet. or mechanic. keep em healthy either way. trucks don’t puke on my bed. but they don’t put their wet nose on my face either.
i like trucks. how cant you make money with a truck? every body is moving. or needs something brought to them. or something taken away. it’s easy. so you have to decide what kind of truck you want. what do you want to carry? dirt? dead bodies? damaged vehicles? there’s a special truck for each one.
i want a bunch of trucks. i’m a generalist. i like to try a little bit of everything. wanna know how the whole thing works.
I’m busted. Used to be you got three bucks, then it was two, and today when I went in, they were paying a buck and quarter a pallet. Which adds up when you have a truck load like dude there, but think about how many pallets he’s hauled to buy a $40,000 truck.
Can you believe this? My cell phone provides this much action. It’s so weird. Hardware stores always have some random aisle full of this type of cut rate entertainment for people who are going to camp or stuck in a motel or can’t afford bus fare to the mall.
Doug came by and we tried to use up some scrap wood we got from a clean out. He wanted to get a bunch of people together and paint California Raisins. So that’s what happened. JB baked delightful chocolate chip cookies. They tasted like angel pussy. Heavenly. All kinds of people passed through and I’d like to thank them all for their spirit and painting abilities. Especially Jeff. He showed us all how far we’ve come.
Obama Sees More Pain Now
but Hope Later on
If I wasn’t supposed to be doing my taxes I’d take the Obama “Hope” poster and put “Pain Now, Hope Later” in it’s place. Thanks New York Times.
“President Obama said on Tuesday that the battered economy was showing signs of recovery, but he warned Americans that more pain lies ahead.”
Truck broke at the grocery store downtown. This being a city, a guard patrols the lot and writes tickets if you stay more than three hours or walk off the walled shopping compound and onto the street. $63.00.
Jhase came by and neither of us could do anything to get the thing going so we walked over to the security kid and told him we’d like to get a beer at the beer joint down the corner.
“You can do that, but I’ll write you a ticket for leaving the lot.”
I started swearing at him, and he just stood there smiling. So I swore some more, and got out my phone to take his picture, which kind of tripped up my string of swears because I have to concentrate to turn it on, then find the camera button, and my timing was off because I was done my swear and the camera hadn’t activated yet. There was an awkward moment where no one was saying anything and I was looking at my phone. Then I had to aim it and still no one was saying anything. I wish I could just be in the moment and not think about blogging at a time like this.
Inhuman dildo or guy doing his job?
I got a good one of him, and then I told him, “You’re not human.” I was back in my stride. I didn’t bring up the fact I’d already walked out to an auto parts store and replaced a hose, just any old thing under the hood thinking it would make my bearded lady happy and turn over. Which it didn’t. Now, when I ask permission to walk away, I’m denied? What am I learning here?
The kid told me to call the number on the sign, which I did, and got a voicemail about what address to send your complaint letter to. So I asked the kid who he calls when he talks to his supervisor. (Doesn’t it feel awesome to tell someone you want to speak to their supervisor? It’s kind of like shouting, ‘I’m a total dickhead!’ Sometimes I am.)
“I’m not allowed to give out that number,” was his answer.
I was frustrated. I’ll admit it. I’ve never been into punching dudes randomly unless they’re my friends and we’re drunk, so I didn’t know what to do. I had called him an inhuman dildo and asked to talk to his supervisor. My bag of tricks was now empty. I’ve been to court many times and I just don’t like it, and that’s where I’d go if I jammed his digital clipboard down one or up the other.
I turned to Jhase and he said, “Trader Joe’s sells beer.” He’s reasonable.
“But it’s not cold,” I told him. As though injustice will never really end.
We strolled through TJ’s, I picked up a Cobb salad hoping to calm down, Jhase got some carrot juice, and we talked about what we’d just been through. The kid out there had made some interesting points in between my defamations.
“You work for yourself, not all of us do. You can choose what you do, but my boss tells me what to do. He tells me not to give out his number, and he tells me to write people tickets if they leave the parking lot. In the past people have told me their car was broken and they go watch a ball game. I see them drive away later and they say, ‘It’s working now!’.”
He made some other points, and all in all, he was explaining why he was a robot. Which when done well creates sympathy in me for robots.
So the tow truck came and we were out of there. It’s probably the starter, since when Jhase hit it with the monkey wrench I keep under the seat for the day I no longer worry about going to court, it almost went. My truck is diesel and has two batteries, and it is hard to start. Every morning it takes a full minute to finally crank over. That little starter gets a workout. Shouldn’t be too hard to switch out, since I have a Chilton’s manual.*
“Be careful, it’s heavy.” That’s the advice they give me for $25?
It only took two steps.
1. Find the starter
2. Remove it.
But for those that like to read, they offer some additional instruction.
LIke for instance, they let you know there are two types of starters. No where does it tell you how to identify the type you own. Which would help. Kragen showed two options, but only stocks one, so that’s the one I took. It looks like the thing dripping grease bolted under my engine. Only Kragen’s is cleaner. And probably broken as well.
I’ll stop right here and say I hate working on cars. Always have. I follow step one for Solenoid Actuated Type. I remove the battery ground cable. Which is possibly the same as the negative battery cable referred to in the Positive Engagement Type up above. So why can’t they call it the same thing? That’s one of many problems I have with this book. I understand electricity a little. There is a negative, a positive and a ground. But do car batteries have three posts? No, there are two. Like a 9 volt battery. So how do I find my trucks ground cable? No mention of such a thing in the index of my Chilton’s manual. I remove the black one wrapped around the minus sign. Thank you.
Under the truck on my back I put a wrench on the wires feeding into the starter solenoid. Sparks shower down on me. I guess I need to undo the positive wire on the first battery as well. Which I do, but wish the manual had told me.
I’m back under the truck. More sparks. I bang my eyebrow against the steel frame. It hurts. I undo every wire going anywhere near eithr of the batteries in my truck and that of course works.
Step 3. “Remove the two bolts attaching the steering idler arm to frame.”
What the fuck is that? I’m not a mechanic, that’s why I bought a picture book. How about cross referencing to a picture somewhere else, so I know what it looks like? Again, the index is useless. At this point it is dark and my drop light doesn’t have a shield and it blinds me and when I move it burns the hair on my head and I need to go upstairs and do my taxes. They’re due in two days.
(*I should say I have a new, second, Chilton’s manual because Dastard never sent me my old one…)
The Ferris Wheel lights were first. It stands the tallest in the parking lot. As Doug and I came up the elevated 880 freeway the Tilt-A-Whirl and all the other contraptions reveal themselves below us. It’s pretty to see the lights of the fair at night.
“That’s the best place to get wasted,” Doug says. I haven’t ever been to a city fair, and feel a little intimidated. All the tough kids from different neighborhoods, probably no 4H barn, and everything is set up on pavement. I’m used to dirt under my feet.
“What’s another great place to get wasted?” I ask.
“By a fire with water nearby,” he says as his head turns back to catch the last look from the window as we pass by. Doug’s wearing a shiny red jacket with “Budweiser” written on the back. It’s the stretch cuff and waist kind, probably from the ’70′s. Sean gave it to me when he realized the cigarette smell wouldn’t come out. I gave it to Doug when I figured it out as well. Doug smokes.
The Stratham Fair was the big one for me growing up. I could lie in my bed at night in Greenland and here the sounds of the action drifting through apple orchards and pine forests into my open window on the hot nights of July in New Hampshire.
Me and the fellahs were trying to sneak behind a tent one time and a large woman in a purple t shirt asked us, “You kids carnies?”
We looked at each other and laughed. I didn’t even know what it meant. She had asked us if we were the kids of someone’s parents working the rides. I thought about it all day, that I might look the same as the children of this lifestyle. I thought the woman was a fool to even consider that. I was a Greenland boy, not an itinerant carousel operators child.
Those early moments of defining yourself stick with you. I can look back and see the beginning of my ego, the beginning of caste and class definitions, or rather my first realization that those things were already strongly in me. It was like realizing I spoke a second language without having studied it. It was just there.
Who else is tired of crappy iPhone photos? I’m getting a camera this week. Taking the money from scrap metal and buying it. That’s what you’re trying to look at up there. Two articulated loaders grabbing scrap and piling it up. I love this place.
Copper hit an all time high last year, over $4 a pound. It went down to about a buck and half though when everything tanked. It’s almost back up to $2. I’m thinking about cashing in my stockpile under the shed.
“Copper’s ‘often called ‘Doctor Copper’ because it takes the temperature of the global economy. According to Doctor Copper, things are improving, mainly due to Chinese demand,” says MarketWatch.com.
Scrap metal is back up to $80 a ton, so I’ve called my neighbors up looking to make a load. I got some pipes from Cal and a water heater from the guy who doesn’t really speak english. Just happens he’s had a water heater by his garage for a week. I knocked and said “Basura?” while pointing at the thing. Which is funny, because he’s Chinese, but everyone knows that means garbage because it’s written on our city provided garbage cans.
Lastly, begging isn’t measured on the stock markets, and isn’t recommended as a retirement plan, but for some people that’s their best option.
Papa Sean came over and we played around with some patterns. He added the fake sushi grass stuff to his. I put some wine out for the girls and made a dress out of a scratch ticket. If this type of thing interests you, I have about twenty more patterns. Come over next tuesday at 7 pm and we’ll make some more. I’m totally serious. Everyone is welcome. We can listen to records and eat snacks and cut out paper. RSVP at 846 2077.
I got the patterns out of an old suitcase that belonged to my friends grandmother, so we’ve already got a lot of good mojo going here.
Powered by WordPress | Managed by Whole Boar
