Recrimination

A man must share his tragedies. I had a plan to accessorize. It was a vision to match cheap- A plastic wristwatches, copped off ebay, like the cartoon coyote, so to jazz up the wardrode. Get mod. More with the times. It was a grand design at the bottom of the wading pool.

The collection of watches, on the desk about a foot from me, comes in bright yellow, orange, blue, coffee brown (a very subtle shade!) and black. So to match any outfit worn, with docile, socially advanced authority, such as some techno-pop music conveys. There's a not-too-nutty credo in aesthetics.

This type of self improvement has been criticized. Compared to waxing the carrot, in the film Fight Club. Some gritty, sweaty truth in that flick. Life also flings some titillating options at ya'. Fashion is macho, mi amigo. Dangerous, too. So inexpensive, bling. And no, not entirely a self indulgent, narcissistic circle jerk.


The shock occured when I was in a hurry to catch a bus this morning. Out of the house like a bat, I grabbed the blue watch on the way to the door. A seeming minor errand, returning books to the library, though anything can turn baleful. Hours later I was in a coffee shop, when I noticed that the blue watch clashed in the worst type of way with the earth tone outfit this victim was sporting. The coffee colored watch would have slayed. But I looked like a jerk. The net effect of the watch and the duds was muy malo, as styling Spaniards may attest.

Guess I could try to strengthen my case for tragedy. When one goes many places in a hideous outfit, he is ugly every mile walked, every place the ass sat in. See this for what it is. A possible infinity in which all frames are fashion victim. This state of affairs was on my person, my wrist, acting like a germ, sickening some otherwise fly rags. It was the awareness of this. The awareness and the agony which tags along, complaining, malicious, in a dysfunctional bonding between selves.

This victim is grieving the mishap. Tomorro, no dressing like a moron. A plan has to  stretch, like rubber. Like the candy color bands on the watches.

Alternative transportation whinny

I'm talking into a microphone like an executive. Minutes from now, I will use voice commands to take my browser to eBay for a shopping trip. Acquisitions. Disbursements. I am business lightning.

Well, for Jesus, there is, to climb, a dirt embankment loaded with broken glass, from beer bottles, whiskey bottles, soda bottles, soda cans, even broken commodes and 7 inch ceramic pipe. There's a huge lapidary of broken and jagged shards from those pipes. I have to push my bicycle up the same embankment to get to the back of my house.

So, one of my hopes for the future is that someone will produce an affordable, lightweight gas powered moped .

Tell me the rodents aren't so

Listening to the online instant radio, I was pleased to hear a panel of zanies discussing a range of subjects that reminded me of a swarm of fruit flies. No one seemed to be getting to any type of point, and they were presenting a decent case for that being unnecessary. They were empowered to do the show by virtue of free services.  I am wearing earth tone, Earth mother print theme tunics and pantaloons to convince anyone this shit makes sense.

　
　
On more sedate afternoons, soft flesh robots talk to each other in a sort of trance. It's a shared trance. Perhaps they're all on opiates together. As if all studied together in the same
corrective facility.

Very little information escapes the 3 inch speakers plugged into a fire engine red plastic netbook out of which I am enjoying the radio show. Maybe I should call it a podcast. Disappointed.

　
　
Note: seems like you have to stick this microphone in your mouth, same as the other one. This garbage is being written using voice recognition software, no shit, I'm talking into a tiny microphone held in my fist, like bird felatio. Like rock'em sock'em robots blowing each other. too, for the consternation. Allowing for more advanced and more miniaturized technology. Annoying.

　
Well. People's vacuous, derivative prattling is as grand as the hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Have I woken up angry again? Is this merely the work of a not too social person? Have a cup of  coffee, and read a passage composed just for you, here at the not too social hour. It's what I call the house. I call my house "the not-to-social hour."  It is both the theme and an affectation.

The runtish microphone I am talking into is reminding me of a mole. Or maybe a mouse. The kind  of little vermin that leaves droppings. Not the computer apparatus.

　
　
I put out a fresh tray of rat poison in the kitchen, and felt a sort of motherly concern that perhaps some of the little rats weren't eating.

But actually, I am certain that all the rats are eating their share of the poison. And sharing it with friends and family. I've been a happier man since I started sharing poison with the rats. There's a rat problem in the city.

An old lady who lives in Polish Hill was telling me, one fine afternoon, the city came up and put out industrial-strength rat poison in the field beside her house. It came in a container that looked like a World War II grenade. Civic weapons  worked great because she could see the rats frolicking on any afternoon before they put out the poison and it was like just plain old barren weeds afterwards.


I encountered a small group of dead rats in the sports field in front of the Observatory this afternoon when I went out on the electric bicycle to throw boomerangs.  They were flattened.   Desiccated .  I didn't mind. I'm not one of those ingrates  who go crying that there's dead rats on the lawn and someone in authority should come and pick them up, as in "who's responsible for these dead rats being here."    I'm glad the city poisoned them.

Talking the software rag

Where the hell is Randall? Randall is supposed to be keeping the kitchen in order, and obviously, he's lazy. Oh well. What can you expect from an imaginary domestic servant?   I have many. Many. But I was counting on Randall to improve the food. All right, it is my fault the lunch I prepared is giving me a case of the trots.  

You would be inventing bogus playmates too,  if you lived like this.The food I  prepare is shit. 

And I accept no blame.   I just don't deserve any.  Because it's the ingredients,  and before you suggest it is my fault that the ingredients  are   putrid, it is the economy, in the extreme, at the domestic level, that has resulted in the gestalt of food I am just hating the thought of right now. Not that this diet at home is all that unhealthy, but it's mostly eggs, lentils, the cheapest chicke  ,and what ever comes lowest on the hog.

 I reiterate, there aren't really any domestic servants here. By the by, I am still working with  voice recognition software.  It is still pretty maddening.

I guess we'll just have to screw someone

 It's the property assessment that are making me itch. I had my hearing last week, and was crushed to realize that the rhetoric  I'm so skilled in was not of interest to the court.

I had not bothered to print the sale price of houses nearest my own, which would've helped a great deal. I had thought that the people conducting the hearings had computer access to  that information and could corroborate my words as I spoke to them . Stupid assumption. They wouldn't or couldn't. Even though that should be available to them at their fingertips they could take no initiative on my behalf.  Or perhaps I was selectively refused a courtesy .

If anyone had been listening at the hearing down town  at the city County building, or whatever the hell that building is off  Grant Street, I would've laid down the tracks to the effect that there is visible land subsidence.  Retaining walls buckle outward up to 45° angles from the cracked sidewalk .  It is common knowledge that this is a high crime turbulent type of neighborhood. With a history of the crack trade.  And some rioting , which is so near dear to the labor history  in our shared collective communal  fine Sylvan  urban   squalor pit.  We are famous for bloody great fracases.  Lots of beating,s lots of carnage over jobs and labor practices and wages.  Would you mind playing a couple chords on the piano, Thomas . Thomas is an imaginary  house musician . He wears a domestic servant uniform .  

The austere party apparatchik who conducted my hearing, which was just me and she in an abject little room, told me that without documentation there was nothing she could do except find in favor of the original judgment, which was about a threefold increase in the assessment value of the home . There a host of other good arguments I had hoped   to present, but it didn't matter because they weren't being heard . I now have  an appeal pandering,  and am pissed.   They probably won't allow me to present new evidence because that's how it usually works with the Pittsburgh appeal process .  They're assholes .

He did the mash, the Milton Friedman mash.

Speaking of Moby Dick, I've been spouting like a whale about Milton Friedman's free-market economics. Gosh by golly, there is bits and pieces of constitutional freedom to discuss in relation to it all. According to Friedman,  free speech meant an individual could submit a business proposal, one could speak in the interest of one's own property, one could originate a  contract, but biggest of all, Friedman believed the Constitution was instrumental in making the switch from feudalism to free-market economics. The founding fathers conceived  free-market economics so that people could earn a living.They could in turn build whatever influence that enabled. Without a monarchy or oppressive big government.   Or a very devious little one.  Just people plying their trades and using their best judgement.

Friedmanites sometimes say that independent tradesmanship affords people the place to apply the ethics of the individuals choosing, and to promote the values that best serve.  So, you might ask, why not go with socialism, to achieve a just and humane society?  Aren't all capitalists a pig?  No, no, no.  So says Milton, free market economics allows people to act as humanitarians.

The fundamental problem with socialism is that people act in their own immediate best interest, act secondly in the interest of relatives, and tertiary in the interest of trusted freinds or aparatchiks. If people collectivized as wonderfully as all great socialist thinkers may have hoped, people wouldn't be a greedy prick on the one end of the economy and the abused yet clueless failures on the other. Maybe that's a mean and over simplistic model. I haven't had my Wheaties today.

The United States is in the grips of monopoly communism There exists a theory called the convergence theory, which states that at some point, from pure necessity , communism and capitalism would merge into one complex economy. That's our status quo. I've become a big fan of Milton Friedman's because people need to be able to earn money, and enter into the economy in order to have political influence. Socialism forces dependence on government, enslaving the masses, and not liberating them, as pop folklore is known to suggest.   .Look around you.  It's twit city.