Depression & Poverty

So, over the last few days the stress and the slowly changing sunrise and sunset times has caused my circadian rhythm to become maladjusted and sleeping has been incredibly difficult. I have been trying to pull myself out of the malaise I have been in and it’s just been incredibly difficult.

I need to find an envelope so I can mail this SD card to Tad or I need to format a 64gb MicroSD card from ExFat to Fat32 so that he can out it in his phone that tops out at 32gb because the default format for 64gb and above is ExFat while 32gb and below are Fat32. I’m putting this out there to him via the blog to see if he reads every blog I post or not. I was going to offer to put a bunch of music on it as well. Kind of like a Mix Tape from the end of the last century.

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When I first moved to Sacramento, I had a love hate relationship but the climate, the culture and the incredibly plentiful bounty of the devil’s lettuce made it grow on me. I have a lot of history and memories here and the era had a soundtrack as I had half a dozen of my own mix tapes, some I made and some that were given to me that had a truly varied and eclectic playlists. Many of them were converted to Mini-Disc but the music files were lost in a hard drive crash on my home file server back in the aughts.

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I often make seemingly perverted or lewd comments but they are so open ended and innocent that only my smirk and tone of voice give it away and mostly it’s because Americans are so repressed about sex and their sexuality. It’s funny to see people’s expressions and reactions when I refer to flowers as plant vaginas, fruit as late-term aborted plants. Or eggs potential chickens until cooked then they are aborted chickens. We use the term miscarriage when nature aborts the embryo, zygote or fetus.

Why are we still debating the same bullshit political issues and rehashing the same tired and proven invalid and detrimental policies like tax cuts for the rich equating to trickle down economics when in reality the global economy is about to hiccough in a way that is going to make the great depression look like a time of prosperity and peace. What the jobs reports failed to mention ever since the recession began in 2000, after Congress balanced the budget and broke the economy, was that the jobs that were hemorrhaged with the various bubbles like the dotcom bubble or the Enron Bubble or the Sub-Prime bubble didn’t get replaced. Those jobs in the tech sector and the various other service industries that suddenly contracted or were outsourced and then repatriated didn’t replace the same volume or even close to what was lost each time. The jobs that did come in are the unskilled, bottom of the payscale jobs and it’s evident when I see people I know having a hard time finding work where they live and needing to commute further abroad to increase the number of opportunities. Yes, Lisa, I am referring to your blog.

The current implementation of the economic model worldwide is broken and it’s about to implode which causes me anxiety because it’s hard enough to find a job that will pay enough to survive when your in your late twenties and early thirties but by the time you reach mid-life which I am on the cusp of, it’s even more difficult because the majority of unskilled workers are the younger demographic entering the workforce and if you’re looking to take anything, you’re being judged based on your age in a negative way. It’s difficult to accept that the the gains I made climbing the socioeconomic ladder using my own intelligence and cognitive abilities to secure jobs in the Network Security and or IT Help Desk career paths are gone and I may never get to climb back up.

See, I am too old and my health issues preclude me from doing the first teir and field engineer work that requires installing cabling and working where I am frequently crawling under desks and in to ceilings. It’s not that I can’t do it, it’s that the continued wear and tear on my body, that aggravates the chronic pain I live with. Some days are worse then others.

So, ever since my Roommate and friend decided to put even more unnecessary stress and drama on my shoulders, I have been depressed, anxious and the pain has fluctuated from moving as little as possible to walking around to try and ease the pain. Different pain from different sources, namely the warm days and chilly nights. Welcome to middle age and this is why there isn’t a manual for getting old. When I was in high school, my step father would say that growing old wasn’t for sissies after a long day of humping freight.

I had the above poster on my closet door in High School because I thought it was funny in my youth because I didn’t have the wisdom to know and understand what I didn’t know and understand which is somehow related to the Dunning-Kreuger effect. Now that I am older and have acquired the wisdom and knowledge my cognitive abilities allow me to realize how much I didn’t know or truly understand.

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In July of 2011 my mother died from a self-induced overdose if prescription pain medication which she had been abusing to more and more profound levels since I was 8 years old and while I could tie my shoes, I wasn’t proficient at tying them tight and secure. So, my mom often tied them for me when helping me get ready for school and one day, when pulling my foot down I tapped her ankle and it opened a sore that wouldn’t close or heal. The pain from those open wounds is intense when they are just wounds but when they are infected with a simple staphylococcus virus it’s even more intensense. The only thing that works to dull the pain, truly make it go away are opiates but there is a price for that relief. My mother and my family paid that price when copious amounts of THC and CBD can achieve damn near the same level of relief without any of the negative side effects or the penalties that come with addiction. My realization that my mom was an addict was shocking and sobering because suddenly everything that didn’t make sense when I was growing up, was suddenly crystal clear like Pepsi. All of my mother’s erratic behavior seemed to be the manifestation of her addiction, as it got worse and that realization took away all of the angst and anger and resentment that I had towards her that had estranged us and kept us from having a close relationship. It did it with her and all of my siblings as well.

It was when I went to her wake and arrived back in Baltimore that I realised that it was no longer home to me, it was someplace where I had been for a while and that California was truly my home. I had suspected as much when I flew to San Francisco fr St Louis on December of 1999 to ride the arrival.of the year 2000 and the potential apocalypse with my friends who were doing IT at companies in the capital of the silicon valley. The big names like Deloitte and Touche or Yahoo. I realized just being in California made me feel better and ultimately when I moved back in September of 2000, that being in the Bay Area and ultimately San Francisco made me feel happier.

Believe it or not Sir Francis Drake missed this little gap in the coastal cliffs and beaches when he was searching for the entrance to the San Francisco Bay, that’s the Golden Gate Bridge that spans that opening known as the Golden Gate. I took this a few years ago when I took my son with a me on a good friend’s boat so we could go salmon fishing using my #samsunggalaxynote as we passed underneath the bridge and out in to the Pacific Ocean.

In a Box…

Even when things are in a crappy place for me, I still will randonly find things that will not just make me smile, but make me amused which I then often feel the need to share with others. I went to Starbucks to use the internet and I can’t say that I am not apprehensive after other encounters I have had at Sacramento area locations.

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But the one that I now frequent is off the beaten path and kind of hidden unless you have been there or search and find it. It used to be completed 24 hours but now the lobby closes at 10pm and the drive-thru window is open all night. There need to be more 24 hour establishments where people can go and meet at night.

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My roommate Jarom has this odd behavior of what I can only call permanent closure with everything and it sometimes makes him do things that seem like he suffers from rectal-cranial inversion. It makes it difficult to continue any kind of relationship because his actions are the antithesis of what a true friend would do in a given situation. I knew this was the possible outcome of the roommate experiment when i agreed to accept his offer and try it out. 9vet the course of the two months I realized that he thrives on drama and the seeming need to be the wiser, more adjusted and stable person who gives sage wisdom to everyone else.

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But he seems to have this perchance for not reading for comprehension and then chastising and reprimanding people for no reason. To make matters worse is that he often spins situations to make himself look like the frustrated adult and everyone else look like an immature and petulant child. He caused a temporary rift with my best friend Angela and I temporarily had her thinking I said she was working against me or some petty bullshit. So when Angie reprimanded me for it, instead of getting a negative attitude I simply asked her if this sounded like me because I never said or texted anything that could be spun this way. A few days went by and she realized that what I was saying was true when I offered to send her the entirety of our text communications.

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Interpersonal politics exist in all primate species and Chimpanzees have been known to keep records of wrongs and to gossip or have politics, so this is evidently just a natural reaction to higher intelligence living in groups.

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My friend Mykl and Tad have had this decades old, on again and off again friendship where they seem to disagree on who was the best and worst friend. It would be amusing to watch if there didn’t seem to be the need for verification from both parties designed to suck the spectators in and that’s easy to do when you’re friends with both because no one is perfect and we all have personality quirks that annoys other people.

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Some people are able to overlook past transgressions and shirk the negative emotions and impact of those events and the behaviors of those involved to move forward. I try my hardest to do this because growing up in a group home with kids who had a far more abusive home then me often had outlandish behaviors that they couldn’t always control.

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I really don’t have much of a connection to Tad outside of a few scattered and random memories which weren’t all negative. So when we reconnected it wss good to have someone who knew me back then to reconnect with. In the time we have been reconnected, he has been a pretty stand up guy and we have had conversations like I imagine we would have had on the landline back in the day had we not of lost contact.

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As I have said before, in my belief system, what you are ceases to exist the moment the electrical pulses that animate your brain stop pulsing and that life is a frangile, temporary thing that can randomly end at anytime, so the here and now is all that matters. Immortality or the closest one can come is how you are remembered in the historical record and for many of us that is our friends and social networking profile. In the future they will be able to see Trump’s tweets and social networking posts, imagine what Abraham Lincoln’s would have looked like.

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So, I try and make my posts in #instagram humorous and snarky in a way that is jovial and not mean or vindictive. I am after all, an anthropologist and that means I really and truly love all things Human and Primate. I am also a long time Medical Marijuana advocate and collected signatures for Proposition 215 back.in the day. Wow, now I sound like Kathy Bates in that Netflix show. So of course, I was amused when the woman said Green Crack because at least it wasn’t Cookies.

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Needing a Miracle

For the first-time in months, I have felt well enough to go to the #weedallstars #orbitz show, a #prop215 #mmjpatient event in #sacramento #california on #friday evenings. This #sb420 compliant event is completely free and is the best place to get medicinal marijuana at prices less than those of the dispensaries for medical much less recreational. This is because Sacramento is the city of trees and this event showers shows that the farm to fork reputation also works for medical #marijuana where it is #farm2bong. Since I am currently unable to drive myself there and do not have another means of conveyance, I decided to act like a DeadHead and hold up 1 dinner indicating that I need a miracle. Here is the Instagram post that I made to ask the community for that ride.

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Now it is just a matter of waiting and seeing if someone will be willing to go a little or of their way to pick me up and take me to the show. Cross your fingers and lets wait and see if I am blessed or not.

Middle Class Rut

So, at the turn of the century, and drove someone to a food bank at a church where there was nary a line because unemployment was so low.  Then, the century changed and the numbers slowly began to creep up often hidden by the high churn of the tech industry until the economy finally tanked in 2008 even though the government and the fed tried to prevent it by manipulating the cash flow.

Flash forward to today and I am with a friend at a food pantry and there appear to be 300 families waiting for service.  The unemployment numbers are a lie because they stop counting people who are unable to find a job and exhaust unemployment. Most of the new jobs created since 2008 have been low to minimum wage, no future, dead end positions.  The kind of positions that are eliminated first when finances get tight.

Also hidden from the numbers are those people who are underemployed,  where employers cut hours when business is slow, leaving the person in limbo and their income reduced to the point where they now require trips to the food bank to continue their slow spiral from the middle class to the subsisting poor while the corporate executives take home record compensation packages even as their companies report record financial shortfalls.

It also ignores the high costs of low prices which is the Walmart economy where they have a strangle hold on the suppliers, forcing the prices they pay down, paying their employees the most minimum amount allowed by law with a majority of Walmart employees being eligible for Federal Government programs for the working poor.  All while the heirs to the found earn record amounts of money.

Another friend of mine earns minimum wage working at Taco Bell and his location takes the benefit card for cash benefits.  If you are homeless or living in your car, you can apply for a special program that let’s you use food stamps for taco bell.  So if my friend were homeless and applied for food stamps, he could pay for his employee meal, sans 10% discount with his food stamps.  My friend, was in one of my classes at ARC so he is actively working to better himself except that even after he earns his degree, taco bell may be the only option for a job.

Friendship & Sibling Rivalry

My amazing friend and her sister who came to support MooSe in saying goodbye to his wife.  This was a moment of revelry and laughter which punctuated the event and made it that more special.

Flame Boy, MooSe and Alaska Girl are twice of my crew.  Like Leverage or The Mystery Men or some situation comedy like a mashup of Cheers, Friends and Community with a heavy dose of Trailer Park boys thrown in for good measure and served smothered in South Park and Family Guy.  My current studies include film making, archeology, biology and primatology.  My professor has put the idea of tree sperm and punishment bones in to our studies.  They are all tied together by me, that red thread that pulls us all together like Jake did in that television show with Keifer Sutherland called Touch.

I try and live like Bill S. Preston, Esquire, and Ted “Theodore” Logan espoused on their most excellent adventure and the unfortunate bogus journey: be excellent to each other.  I try and do that every chance I can. I also try and surround myself with other people who do the same. I lead by example.

Today, MooSe and I were late because Flame Boy missed the bus he needed to get to work on time.  So MooSe and I rolled two joints, jumped on the road to ferry Flame Boy to work with time to spare. We were late but did score.a.yummy sugar free vanilla chai tea along the way from Peet’s at a higher price then Starbucks per ounce. Sadly, Starbucks don’t have it. It goes up there with It’s A Grind Coffee Iced Coffee. The Roseville It’s A Grind changed names and I haven’t been back since the draw was the iced coffee.

So MooSe told me twice that he was glad everyone who showed up for him did. It doesn’t matter how it came together but it did. All of us in the city of San Francisco then as necessary because that is what friends do.and funerals are for the living.

ACE?

So this evening has been full of me just being in a blah mood.  I am not sure why, I am in this funk, but I am.  Sure,last night was beyond awesome and had a profound impact on me.  Seriously.  I know you are doubting my sincerity but it truly is genuine! After leaving McDonald’s tonight, hey they have free wifi, and I got close to In & Out and the smell hit me the sensation was one of desire but not of food.  Yup, I desired the taste of a single with cheese and onions smothered in tongue.  Or would that technically be the other way around?  Either way the smell was arousing. And i wasnt hungry, I was horny.  As Ay-Ay-Ron would say something about Russell now while MooSe and I are making our own sign slang and this feeling is dubbed “camping” because the sign for camping is making a tent shape.  Ala pitching a tent.  I know. Hilarious.

Back to the Ace plumber, who appears to be every bit the competant individual as Joe The Plumber.  He parked facing the wrong direction and slapped the curb. As my Onion Tasting friend would say, a douche.

Now before you think I have gone all wonky or something, we spent all day randomly texting each other so of course she was and is on my mind.  She is kewl and I enjoyed hanging out with her.  Friends are kewl and getting to know someone when there is a mutual attraction that creates a tingle that sparks is awesome.  Making someone laugh makes me feel.good and seeing their genuine smile because of me makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Feeling Like Kenny.

One of my favorite episodes of South Park involves cats, Kenny and drugs.  In it, the drug is cat urine and they call it cheesing.  Its funny because Kenny’s voice is understandable and he goes off talking about one of my favorite things, not marijuana, titties.

It is Nucking Futz.  Online dating, not my obsession with them.  I have been using Plenty Of Fish for several months and it is a lot like Pacific Salmon fishing has been the last couple of years: not very many nibbles, fewer bites and no catches or releases anywhere near my boat.

After reading the profiles and the comments, I just have to wonder what the hell guys are thinking sometimes.   I am just as guilty albeit in other areas because I could noy message any woman and openly ask if she is ready to fuck.  I am not sure of the odds and I just do not care, that amount of drama is just not something I could do.

It seems all the guys are looking for one night stand, no strings attached free sex and think they can get it by sending dick pictures.  I have yet to find a chick who
Is like “you know, I didn’t want no string sex with a random guy until this dude sent me a #Selfie his penis posted to instagram and my vagina was all “like.””

Look, I am as horny as the next guy.  I do not have confidence or self esteem issues and I am not horrified by myself even when I am looking at myself naked in a full length mirror.  It does make me want to find the flesh colored market and put some skin color on that white paper that is my skin before ADD clicks in and I begin to question my lineage and my relation to the Pillsbury dough boys.   Not good and that kind of a yeast connection could lead to alcoholism.

So for a few days I have been chatting with this chick and I wasn’t really sure how this online dating thing worked.  We had been chatting via Skype and yesterday it started dropping messages.  She had already given me her real first name when she contacted me with skype.  She e-mailed me her phone number and asked me to text her.

For a seemingly infinite moment panic began to rise with a choatic roaring in my ears.  Ok, text, I can do.  So I texted her and waited.  Now, I am like a five year old when it comes to waiting and I embrace it.  It took her about half an hour to respond and it was like hours in my head.  Like a teenager with a crush, checking for new messages even though the phone has been still and silent.  Hey, I am a nerd and this makes it ok.  Besides don’t act like you don’t do the same damn thing.

My biggesy fear is to come off creepy or scary.  Like that she would fear being told to put the lotion on its skin or fear being sprayed with a hose.  I know that for some people they think of Clarice and hope that the sheep are quiet but for me it makes me think of Dicky Roberts and I begin to chuckle like Beavis.

More nuts. Like in your face and you cannot ignore them kind.  Like a scotsman on a windy ass day playing golf.  She wanted to meet at the Starbucks where I do homework.  For a second the panic that set in was like I lived in a single wide with my dogs and I was a hoarder.  Then the panic was like being an addict at the end of a ginger where you find yourself dirty and smelling of urine in an alley at the foot of Nob Hill in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. I know this because I lived with a window that faced the alley.  Oh the stories I could tell, the HBO documentaries I could make.  Seriously.  I didn’t experience it first hand, I just saw it with the naked eye.  And I smelled it frequently.  Best night in San Francisco comes after the first heavy rain of the season washes the smell of urine off of the city.  If it is not long enough or heavy enough the oder is horrible.

She texts me she is worried she will have body odor in the form of stanky arm pits because she just got done teaching dance lessons. I am not sure about other guys, but a woman who dances gets an immediate +10 to all.attributes and 20 to sexy.  Dunno why, it just is.

So the idea of her being sweaty and smelly from dancing could be an additional bonus.modifier like some real world sex rpg.  Yeah, I know, I am a nerd and if she ever reads this I will never get to touch her titties again.  Thankfully she doesn’t have ready access to my blogs and asked me to send them to her again.  Hah.  Not likely because she had some totally spectacular titties, was definitely purdy good at kissing even if she did taste like onions and In & Out.  Still made me feel like a 14 year old boyscout and as MooSe and I jokingly sign: camping.

Patience & Waiting

Memories are moments of our existence chemically stored in our brains. The older we grt the more we store but the harder they are to recall but flow freely enough on their own.

I find myself outside of a Starbucks waiting for MooSe to handle the legal paperwork at the Neptune Society’s office in regards to his wife’s cremains according to her wishes.  I sit here trying to clear my mind and find calm but the tragedy in my life this month and the loss from My People has been incredible and close to home.

It has shaken me to the very foundations of my being and made me painfully aware of my own mortality.  How quickly it can all tumbling down around you and that in the end the only ones who truly matter in this world are the ones you love because they love you.  Your people.  We all have them, both near and far. Mine spell their names oddly or have weird fetishes for apples while others make me want to dance on the sun.

But today, I contemplate the end of my friend Thea and what I can do to ease the suffering of my friend, MooSe.

Playing Hookey with the Hookah

So I played hookey from school today becausr my mind was just not in a place where I could function.  Plus, I just did not want to leave MooSe during this time.  So I decided not to go to classes.  My teachers know what is going on and I have gotten positive feedback from all if them.  I can only hope that my previously punctual and flawless attendance will work in my favor.

Dominoes & Munchies

So while playing Dominoes last night, I was given a big bag of weed.  By MooSe’s brother-in-law.  It gave me the munchies and was the highlight of my morning post to Instagram.

MooSe and the other guy thought I looked stoned enough that they could easily defeat me.

I wasn’t that stoned and I am pretty good at strategy and scoring points when I understand the game.  I took the lead and would have kept it if the other guy didn’t setup MooSe and we give him enough additional points to win. 

Today at school during the break between ASL and Weight Training, I smoked out with a new chill dude and walking back from the car, I realized we shared the same observation about the girls on campus.  Kind of hilarious.  Sadly, I slacked off and only did 100 reps in sets of 10.