My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Thought for a moment Ru Paul was running for office, it turned out to be Ron Paul. Similar to the leprechaun that turned out to be a leper colony.

Don’t know why I don’t have the option of adjusting photo sizes any more. They look huge. For instance this example of what to do when you run out of screws, nails, and duct tape but you gotta get the shelf hung.

The well educated carpenter wanted me to move some art for him. We threw this street-found painting of a dolphin breaching a pot leaf in the back of the truck and brought it to his work shop where generations of children will ask,”Is that a hippy?”

I haven’t even pulled the curtains back and seen what kind of day this is. The thick elderly hair on my chest is sticking out straight with static from tossing and turning in bed all night. I’ll put a shirt on soon, it’s cold in here.

About a month ago I started paying rent on a storefront, going in with Jimbo, a guy I work with hauling. I realized if I quit drinking, I’d have enough money to to afford it.

It’s almost two months now and we havent opened, but by January first we will swing wide the gates of garbage.

It’s been ten minutes since I wrote that last sentence. The nice leather work gloves my parents sent me for Christmas are laying on top of the stack of invoices and bills here at the desk.

I’ve been working so much my girlfriend went and got a kitten for companionship and I haven’t gotten a single gift for anyone this year.

The storytelling part of me is turning into a hoarders backyard, the broken bit of conversation I see so much potential in isn’t even under a tarp, it just sits and rots. The pictures I could have taken at these foreclosed homes, the eviction cases, the old folks who’ve passed away and the basement sat untouched for years, the possibility of taking those pictures vanished when I threw everything in my truck and hauled it to a transfer station.

The end of the year is a quick right and another left away and I’m not mourning it’s passing, I’m hoping that this next one I handle a little better, squeeze more of the juice from it, now that the tree is growing stronger.

Cleaned out an apartment after an eviction. This is how we found the living room.

This nut comes by and tells me stories about the old days and I give him junk from my collection in trade.

Jimbo and me, we’re getting all the junk from the backyard been under tarps, knocking off the rat turds and settin’ up a shop. Gonna sell it all, and more keeps comin’ in so we figure we’ll pump till the well runs dry.
This storefront we rent from a couple old Chinese guys and they said “Hell, knock down walls ‘n whatever” so there’s Jimbo’s finger startin’ to knock down a wall.

The Robot has been silent lately. Focus has been over at the store Jimbo and I are opening.
Here he is with a $44 receipt at town hall for registering the business now known as Mixed Nuts.

A bit blurry since my phone went in San Francisco Bay and no longer focuses.

Mixed Nuts was not my idea or first choice, but I am a silent partner and learning to let go of my control issues.

My choice was Silverfish & Foxing. A name that in the end sounded both trendy and pretentious.

Pretentious because it sounds like a law firm, although it refers to two scourges of paper. Silverfish being the little insect that eats books and foxing being the term for the brown stains that appear with ago as the elements in the paper break down.

Trendy because in San Francisco everybody seems to be naming their business in this English countryside manner.
Butcher & Hog, bourbon and branch, I’ll keep you posted as I think of more.

They serve white pages thick steak, mashed potatoes and lettuce diced to postage stamp bites on Monday nite while the football game is on and men are scrambling each others brains on the field.

Mr. Louden sat at a table in the corner tonite, drinking an IPA and cutting into the entree. He affected an elderly man’s voice and asked, “Have you ever made love to a stroke victim?”

Others at the table laughed and the conversation turned to thrift. At one point, during the Great Depression for example, it was beneficial to take the little salt packet from the restaurant home with you, and to keep the small bar of hotel soap when you’ve checked out.

“At this point the advertising machines are disgorging such voluminous amounts of trinkety drek a man would become victim to a hoarding death in a matter of months.”

Crushed under reusable tote bags emblazened with pharmaceutical brands and real estate agent’s complimentary pens. The urge for thrift takes on a new expression in that one must refuse items today in order to be thrifty.

He cut away a golf ball of fat and with his fork trucked it to the edge of his plate.

“Look at that. It’s like seeing my heart.”

There are no cases for him to solve anymore. The once paid observer gives it out for free now.

Worked with the English Accent the other day. He has a blue velvet lined board on the wall in his workshop full of his father’s foot race medals.

“He ran against Eric Liddell, the man from Chariot’s of Fire, and beat him several times. In those days they had separate changing rooms, Liddell was a commoner.”

I was demo-ing out a Victorian era kitchen chimney with the son of an aristocrat.

“No,” he corrected me, “My father was the doctor to aristocracy, but not titled himself.”

We were both covered in soot, he was in the attic with a small sledge called a single-jack, smashing the clay lining of the flue to bits. He handed chunks down through a hole in the ceiling and I loaded them into 5 gallon buckets and walked them to the truck. Neither of us had adequate health care.

The honey badger kind of gave a fuck his boat sank. But looks like he dragged her back to shore.