Saturday, December 31, 2016

Modern Times

My wrists are broken and my armpits stink like an Egyptian Slave's butt crack. My neck creaks with arthritic decay. My back muscles feel like so many weather-worn rubber bands cracking in the sun. But I have some things to say so I will suffer and tap each letter with my nose or my flaccid penis and eventually all the letters will create an essay. This is my curse: when I have something to say then I am broken by the heartless world and too physically deformed to type, and when I am healthy and peaceful then I have nothing to say but putrid political vomit. 

I have an essay to type about Jim, the disabled Coast Guard veteran who lives in a van in the Walmart parking lot near me. His grandmother was a Blackfoot Indian squaw purchased in a gambling saloon by a fire and brimstone preacher who was Jim's grandfather. But Jim and his crippled knees are a different essay although he makes an appearance in this one. I also have an essay to write about my longing to be married to the recently passed Debbie Reynolds circa 1953 and to dance with her on the beach as Nat King Cole serenades us, but that is not only redundant, but also hopeless fantasy. I may as well go to Las Vegas and scour the escort service websites for a Debbie Reynolds look-alike and then have her dress up in '50s era clothing or a Singing Nun's habit and fuck her on a vinyl, paisley couch but it would only fill me with shame and self-loathing. Goodbye, Debbie. You were an actress but, damn, you played the part of the talented, lovable, buoyant sprite perfectly, the woman that men shamelessly desired even if it was only an act. 25 years of chasing your modern day equivalent has proved futile. You were one of a kind. George Michael also died recently and I want to reminisce about 1984 and WHAM! and Junior High School woes (standing alone outside a dance, listening to Cyndi Lauper serenade dancing couples in awkward gymnasium light) but there is no time today. And Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynold's daughter died a day before her mother and this is prophetic because Fisher's on-screen persona, Princess Leia, was recently manufactured circa 1977 by computer generated animation...and if anything will kill you it's the realization that you have been cloned. I want to write an essay about Star Wars phenomenon, not so much a review of the recent movie, but a study of the SW phenomenon in general. But that will have to wait for another day.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Coronado

Not much is written about Coronado, the Conquistador who went insane and thought there were 7 cities of Gold in the deserts north of what would become Mexico around the year 1540 and so Coronado hunted for two years with 5000 sheep and 100+ equally crazy men in the hinterlands of the deserted South-west north America looking for gold. Gold exists, but not cities of gold. Mostly he found humble Indians living in cliffs, so naturally he killed everything in his path.

Well, this is his memorial...
Winter is chasing Senor Oggy as far south as the International Border where drones oversee the slave camps building the Great Wall of Trump's Ego.

There is a limestone cave here but I forgot my flashlight so this is as far as I could go.

kind of rare to have a random Conquistador on a billboard next to a van named El Conquistador

I don't cast quite the same shadow as Coronado but we all do our best.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Christmas Coal

When Santa bring you coal, instead of an alligator jacket, then dump it in the stove and burn it. Oggy got an extra ration of coal for heat. They closed the walmart as i was going to get some ice cream. "Go home. We're closed." I smiled ruefully and walked back in a downpour to the empty van. Started a fire and played some mandolin. let the ghosts of christmas past knock on my window rather than a sheriff.

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Dreaming of the tropics

This is as good as it gets today. people laugh and say "You live in a van down by the river."
Har har har.
I say, dead serious, "I'd kill for a river."

can you guess the meat?

Friday, December 9, 2016

Notes while watching Hannity

Loathsome. A Mouth of shit. Fox is vile beyond repair. Hopelessly bereft of humility, poisonous. foul. Opiod induced constipation. Diabetic nerve damage. Selling blood glucose strips on black market. Repugnant. No cure for this level of evil. No hope.
one of the sleaziest propagandist alive

Fox News sounds like this, "Americansarebeingliedtobydeludedcronydemocratswhostealtheirchildrenandrapetheirdaughterswhileinvestinghugesums-inoverseasdrugoperationsandthecountryisgettingreadyforcollegefootballplayoffsandwon'thatbefuntoeatbbqribsonacolddayinmichigan-
whiletheratsinobama'swashingtonstealandstealfromhardworkingchristianswhohavehadabootontheirnecksince2008-andappleannouncedanewiphonewithmorememoryandwehaveanalystlynnchutotelluswhattechtoystobuyyourkidsthischristmas,Lynn?

.

It's blatant emotional and psychological manipulation of the grossest kind. Bread and Circus. Bleed them with absurd slander and boogeyman theories and then placate them with products and games and cleavage. So disgusting and irresponsible. It's actually a great example of the failure of free speech. As long as emotional and psychological manipulation with genocide rhetoric is considered appropriate programming for a restaurant then we are all fucked. Democracy can only operate when everyone is informed and everyone is sober and everyone votes. So, America strikes out on all three of those points. No one is informed. Politicians dodge every tangible fact or speak in speculative vague language. Most people are not sober. And more eligible voters neglected to vote than those who actually voted this last election. If these eligible-but-deferring voters had voted for Donald Duck for president then we would have a talking animated cartoon as commander. So, we do not have a democracy and Fox News is partly responsible for spewing filth 24 hours a day and making people think there is no point in participating in a foul game. There is simply no point in contributing to a country that ignores the criminal abuse that Fox shovels down their throat all day. It's a nation of maggots feeding of rotting flesh and there is no point in spraying deodorizer. 

Thursday, December 8, 2016

In-oggy-vation

shower
Maybe you are wondering how I wash my ass crack in the Walmart parking lot. Well, sometimes I go into the bathrooms and use paper towels, but that's unsatisfying. When I am on the beach I simply hose myself off because it's a thousand degrees and the water is cooler than the air temp. But in the high, cool, winter desert water temp stays around 40 degrees unless it is in the sun. Thus...my radiant solar heat roof top shower solution with a length of hose so I spin the pouch over the edge and the hose reaches to the ground where I...
low tech sponge and bucket method...lame.
...have a privacy screen made from my Viva Mexico curtains...If I waste no time, I can usually take a shower and be dried and dressed when the police or security show up to escort me off the property.

I had plans to run a 20ft length of clear hose in loops on the roof but there is a problem with that because the water must run from high to low. If there are any low spots then gravity will not push it all out since there is no reservoir on top...or I'll need to open an air valve at the end of the hose...it will only run to the low spot and the hose will run dry. I haven't really tried it because I don't want to attach junk to my roof but I forsee some engineering problems. It has to be thought out first. Maybe a sloped rail that the hose attaches to from high to low with a reservoir. I don't know. I will give $5 Oggy Bucks to anyone who can solve this engineering problem .The roof is fiberglass and I'm trying to keep a minimum number of holes in it to avoid leaks. Clear hose lets water heat fast on sunny days but it can also freeze at night. I think the portable radiant shower pouch is the simplest solution because it can be moved inside during the night when the water will freeze. Otherwise the water in the hose will expand and crack the hose and render the whole thing useless. But in the Tropics a shower solution is not really needed because any water in any reservoir will suffice to get me clean. In the high desert in winter I need the water to be exposed to sunlight for a few hours before I can shower and then it will be hot.

It's all very scientific but I can shower with a gallon of water or less depending on if I've let my hair get out of control.

The other solution is to visit a community aquatic park or rec center with a gym and a shower area. The one I visited in Cedar City had a hot tub...so after a invigorating exercise routine I sat with the retired community in the Arthritis Springs.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Dear cops, please leave me alone

Please god, let me be able to drive ten miles without being pulled over to the side of a deserted highway and getting pistol whipped and strip searched for no reason.. Incredible. Bullshit. I'm simply driving at my normal 55mph and this hot shot shiny state trooper jumps on my ass, and this of course causes every vehicle in front of me to slow down to 50mph after driving way over the speed limit to pass me. Well, shit, now we're driving at 50mph and I got this cop car behind me and I can't pass or speed up. Obviously he wants to search me for weed that I should be smuggling from Colorado to pay for the ticket he's going to give me. So, what is the point of passing anyone? The two vehicles in front of me are following each other but about 10 feet. I'm about 30 feet behind the last vehicle. Finally, Shinyman turns his shiny fucking lights on and I pull over. Fine, at least let's get the beat down over with, the suspense was killing me.

"I pulled you over for two reasons, "says Mr. hotshot state uniform man. "One, you were following the vehicles in front of you too closely."
Sure, they were obviously following each other about half as close as I was following them, but he pulls me over. What-fucking-ever.
"The second reason is your windshield is obstructed by those items hanging off it."
 "My rosary?" It's about the gauge of dental floss.
Mr. Shiny Badge nods his head. "Yes, sir."
"But it was blessed by Pope Francis."
"It is still a violation. Only an air freshener can hang from that mirror..."

Blah blah blah, step out of the vehicle, where are you headed, blah blah...looking for work. etc. etc. go ahead and put your hands behind your back so I can make sure you aren't carrying weapons. 

My fucking lord. I really look forward to the day I stop driving on U.S. highways. So tired of getting police in my face putting their hands on me. You know how hard it is to keep track of the multiple fake driver's licenses I had to make for my trip through Central America? And I have about 4 different versions of my registration and had to keep a straight face while I searched for one that was authentic.

I almost prefer the Mexican version where we swear at each other until I pay him enough money for him to let me leave. Damn, I was almost feeling patriotic and Mr. Shiny Service Revolver had to go and ruin it with his gestapo attitude. A fucking rosary on my rear view mirror>??? Following the car in front of me too closely???? Anyone with eyes could tell they were far close than I was. Such cowardly bullshit. So fucking sick of it. I didn't even look at the piece of paper he gave me. Maybe it was a court summons, maybe not. Makes no difference in this forsaken land of laws and shiny badges running around with sticks up their ass. Fucking state is as flat as a table top and not one person rides a bicycle.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

God Bless America

I went to a thrift store because I was still reeling from being forced to surrender my Alligator Jacket in Las Vegas. The Thrift Store funds a senior center next door and I heard someone playing piano so I went in to listen. It was guy playing some cool Roaring '20s tunes. Man it was good. Then I noticed that he had a sheet of braille in front of him to remind him of song titles. The guy is blind. Well, he asked for request that included the word "Angel" in the title or lyrics. This guy was doing requests from memory of any song that had the word Angel in it. What? So I requested "Earth Angel" from the '50s and he played it in two octaves. Man. Then I asked for Angel Eyes but he did not know that one so he's more of a showtime and pop tune pianist because Angel Eyes is pure '40s lounge jazz. I asked him if I could play a song from my fake book and he said, "Sure, after the pledge and announcements."

The other senior centers I've been to are long term care facilities but this was a true meals for seniors dining area that was open for lunch only. So, the veterans and retired farmers of Western Arizona come for community and socializing. There were a few announcements about the meal times and someone announced that he was going to visit family for Christmas so he would not be there and everyone wished him safe travels. Then, the host held onto a big American flag and everyone said the standard pledge of allegiance. I even joined in because I was drawn into the solemn honesty of the moment, a room of 70-80 year old men and women  with VA hats saying the pledge of allegiance. I swear if I had recorded it then the video would go viral in this hollow, shallow nation, but I did not get a video because I was saying the pledge of allegiance. But it wasn't over. The blind pianist, Bob, sat back down at the piano and everyone launched into Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" and I sang that one with the crowd too. No mention was made of presidents or of politics. It was non-partisan and I feel that the generation born in 1930 is the last who do not get a video of every fart and song and grinning mockery of themselves to post on the internet. I was proud of that crowd, they did their best with what they were given. These were the independent elderly, not ready to go to a long term care facility but also not able to cook for themselves. One man wearing a WWII veteran cap told me his wife had died 4 years earlier and he'd been coming here to eat lunch since then.
Bob sat down to eat, which involves feeling for his food and then putting it in his mouth and I sat down and played some rough, out of practice, Broadway songs. My Funny Valentine seemed completely out of place but Let it Snow seemed ok. The experience got me thinking about the people I met on this journey and how I should only write about people and experiences rather than punditry of ideas. My ideas should be explored through people, not the other way around. So I dedicate this to some of the people I met, the highlights.

Can Food - This morning I awoke in a Walmart Parking lot and all the parking lot entrances were taken up by people with signs asking for help. Hey, the Salvation Army can ring their bell and this is also the season for giving to homeless people. I bought two biscuit sandwiches and asked if he wanted one. He said, "I'll take anything."

At a truck stop in Utah I watched some basketball with a truck driver who had been in the well service industry until gas prices plunged. He said the hot dogs at Burger King were 'actually, pretty good.' and he thought about buying one and then decided there was no point and went to his truck. A woman in the same dining room was sitting with a bible. Her husband is a truck driver and she was waiting for him because his heater had problems and also his transmission needed service in Las Vegas. So she was waiting patiently for her husband.

A Trump supporter was playing a guitar outside the library in Cedar City. We got to talking about The Beatles and agreed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band was their peak of originality. He was worried that Veterans were being treated worse than illegal immigrants and that job opportunities were being taken by foreigners. "Trump speaks for me." he said.

Shared a campsite in Canyonlands in Eastern Utah with a photographer from Illinois. We both thought the price of $20 for a patch of dirt was too high so we split it. We shared some premium Colorado weed and marveled at the Milky Way on a night that was so clear and moonless that we could see about 50 commercial planes to the south traveling in and out of Las Vegas. It was an epic night of shooting stars, cold, freezing, but epic universal vistas. I said, "Maybe this is the weed talking, but I love weed." I also spent ten minutes hunting for my gloves which were in my pocket. He was horrified Trump was elected, horrified a lying reality show celebrity had fooled voters into thinking he was qualified to be president without even a PTA chairman position under his belt. We commiserated and tried to rationalize the insanity, while enjoying the scenery and purity of the Canyonlands. He went to Monument Valley and I went to Capitol Reef.

First night in Moab was the supermoon, which I had planned to experience in one of the National Parks. A group of youths from all over the western united states and even Holland were in the hostel and had the same idea so they let me ride with them to The Arches. They were all about 22 years old and I felt like I was from another world. One was a young woman who is a youth intervention specialist who takes amok teenagers into the forest for two weeks to get their heads straight. She'd just returned from Guatemala so we had some things to talk about. A young man was a park ranger/biologist with a plate in his arm and a plate in his knee after skiing and bouldering accidents. He gave me all the advice on where to go in Canyonlands. One guy saving up money to buy land in Nicaragua had recently returned from Gates of The Arctic national park. We'd both gone to University of Fairbanks, Alaska. He asked me when I was there and I said, '1989' and he said, "Shit, I was born in 1992." The woman from Holland was touring The World for a year...and had been in Tahiti a mere two weeks earlier. A couple had driven from Baltimore to see Moab and The Arches. It was odd being around that many people who easily could be children of people I went to school with. Their vocabulary, nonchalance and high energy and diversity were nothing like how hipsters are portrayed. They all were obsessed with any light pollution so we hiked in The Arches with no flashlights or only red, night vision, lighting. They dried their own meat jerky and had dried fruit as snacks, talked about rappelling and climbing casually. Maybe Moab adventure climbers do not represent the generation born in 1992 but I was impressed. They were not slackers. No, they were not industrial welders or tradesmen or veterans, but they were not slackers and they were not going to idly stand by while the environment is destroyed. These kids were far beyond recycling all their wine bottles. They had bicycles hanging off their trucks, one guy was running a marathon across every National Park, another guy was bicycling to Patagonia. Some had kayaks, rock climbing gear, snowboards, skis, everything. It's easy to have a low opinion of hipsters but that's because most people don't visit Moab and see the elite of the Hipster generation. Best of luck to them.

I hung out with some Walmart campers in Cortez, Colorado. One guy said, "I'm a Mormon, but I don't know what that means." I told him I thought it meant he believed Joseph Smith was a prophet. He shrugged and smoked some weed from a small pipe. He'd been working on his truck and I told him that I had tools but after a day he'd finished the brake job. He'd had rear axle seals fail and that soiled the brake shoes with differential fluid so everything had to be replaced. This was a familiar job to me. He had a little dog with him, well behaved, never barked. He asked if I had a stove in my van because he'd seen billows of smoke coming out the chimney. I told him that I'd tried to start the charcoal fire with only paper and regualr charcoal, no lighter fluid and it had turned into a horrible disaster with clouds of thick white smoke pouring from the chimney and the stove top into the van...and wafting across the Walmart Parking lot, causing alarm from anyone watching. So I poured water on the smoldering charcoal and that made everything worse. So I had to reach into the stove and pull out the smoldering, wet charcoal and throw it into the bushes so it would stop smoking. This whole incident took place in 28 degree weather before I went to Moab. I had the windows open, smoke pouring from the windows and me holding my breath to reach into the stove. It was one of the worst stove experiences I had and all because I got too confident with the charcoal and tried to get it going without lighter fluid. I told him I now only use a base of "instant light" charcoal and then when those are glowing and ashed over I add more regular, cheaper charcoal and the red coals will quickly get the new ones burning. And no smoke is needed. It was a learning experience. The man nodded and smoked some more weed. His companion called out sarcastically from a car where he was sitting that, "Sure, the climate ain't getting hotter. No, we got chem-trails in the sky and crops dying on the vine and the only place that ain't an inferno is around 6000 ft up a mountain. But let's keep burning those fossil fuels." I wasn't sure what he was referring to, but I answered, nonsensically, "Yeah, and let's prostitute all our teenage girls out for the jollies of some San Bernadino pornographers, while we're at it." He quickly drove away and I shamefully walked back to my van. I know it's easy to be proud that you don't shop at Walmart but I caution this kind of insulation because it was Walmart shoppers who fell for Trump's Walmart slogan "Make America Great Again." If you don't sleep in a Walmart parking lot and shop there once in a while they you are truly out of touch with modern America. You might as well move to Labrador.

I camped next to some hunters in New Mexico. They drove way out to a national forest parkland and set up camp with two generators blasting Lynyrd Skynyrd music until 10Pm. I didn't talk to them, preferring to give them their space. They had a good time. The Sheriff actually visited me the next day, to check up on the campground, ask if there were any problems. He said there were only three sheriffs in the area. I'd found a live .330 gauge shell on the ground and was going to make some jewelry out of it but decided to throw it into the woods. I left that detail out of our conversation. What the hell do you do when you find live ammunition. I feel like I'd get arrested if I walked into a police station to have it disposed of. but I can't throw it away or leave it on a park bench. Man, I just buried it and hoped it would vanish.

I was at the library and a man's phone rang. He was hard of hearing and put it on speaker so everyone nearby could hear it. It was a collection call from an agency. He hung up on them and said to me, "They'll spend $1000 to collect $100. Makes no sense." I told him I knew all about it but they will eventually stop.

There were a few more and I'll add them later but those are the ones that stand out. That's America.




Song Medley of Broken Hearts


Got inspired to sing a few songs that I've been rehearsing.

Monday, December 5, 2016

Vegas Images

I could not avoid Las Vegas on my grand tour of the south west. The only other option is through Page and the Lake Powell/Glen Canyon Dam and through the north rim of the Grand Canyon, which I have no interest visiting in December and freezing some more, or else south over the Boulder Dam/Hoover Dam. I have had a charcoal fire in the van every night for a month and let there be no illusions about the danger of setting things on fire inside a vehicle. The combustion chamber of the engine is one thing and microbursts of electricity igniting a tiny bit of gasoline and air is dangerous but it does not compare to nightly, with numb fingers and frozen clouds of Oggy breath filling the stove with charcoal and a little paper and sometimes a military issue fire starter or even a squirt of white gasoline and then striking a match or a lighter to lovingly bring the warmth back to Oggy's toes while nervously watching the chimney for leaks and then leaping up to grab a shirt that I had laid on the chimney to dry and realizing it is polyester and has melted to the flex stainless steel! Man, and to coax the flames to red hot heat and then refill the charcoal or run outside in the sub freezing temps and gather wood...etc...etc..police encounters, angry neighbors, fathers at parks calling me a pedophile. Fuck. It's survival but if I could avoid it without a visit to a slum motel then I would. So, I drove south and found myself back in Vegas, Jesus, what a foul city. 

I arrived early on a Sunday and decided to take a walk around the town, which only homeless people do...

Friday, December 2, 2016

Vistas





one day I'll get a fancy camera with panorama assist.

The month long tour is over. I did the best I could on a tight budget from the financial fumes left over from Central America. I did not intend to tour Southern Utah immediately after returning from Mexico but I saw my opportunity while the temp agencies sat on their asses and smoked cigarettes so I seized it. I would recommend touring slightly earlier, skipping Thanksgiving crowds and avoiding the 9 degree storms that had me curled up with my broken ego and some heated stones for company and warmth. 4th graders are given a free pass to national parks for them and their family and that saves an $80 entrance fee annual pass but the campgrounds are an example of how the national parks simply do not pay for themselves because a patch of dirt and a pit toilet costs $20 a night. And that still does not cover the cost to build a solar array in Bryce Canyon or free shuttle services or road maintenance, but at least it covers the cost of the dirt site and pit toilet and some water. The park system is very costly but does not get enough federal funds to stay afloat with the professional biologists and researchers. Most of the staff is actually volunteers, which tells you everything about how much money they have to throw around to staff. There is not enough money to pay workers so they overcharge for the campgrounds and $30 entrance fees at most of the popular ones. An annual pass is $80 and older folks get a lifetime pass for $10 and the campgrounds are half price. This is probably a gift because they figure you lived a life paying ridiculous prices for campgrounds and now they give you a discount.

Naturally

This is our world.
Savage and Mossberg...ah...makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Life and Death

Oggy, dressed as Butch Cassidy, overlooking the Colorado River

possibly a dead, frozen vole in Bryce Canyon
 This vole is a grim reminder that Oggy should get out of this freezing wasteland where hippies should not live in vans and play sad country songs as their fingers freeze.
another Oggy compliation

Thursday, November 24, 2016

God Bless Us All

freezing Oggy-sicle

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Panorama

Indian Scout eyeing the horizon...

I'm breaking my rules about posting photos of nice spots but the Canyonlands is jaw dropping. The Grand Canyon is a bit too much vista in one direction. A person can't digest it. But Canyonlands has diverse vistas in many directions because the mesa was carved on both sides. Maybe not as deep as the Grand, but deep; 2000 feet. So, I'm not in a position or season to go trekking for days in the back country. A casual day hike of 8 miles is plenty and then quickly get the charcoal fire burning. The snow arrived yesterday in the higher mountains to the east. They get 280 inches a year but a person must carry their skis up the mountain if they want to ski because the closest ski resort to Moab is Telluride, I think. Or somewhere to the east in Colorado.

Looking southwest toward the confluence of Green and Colorado rivers.


I hope everyone appreciated the supermoon. It's been 2 years since I went on a moon hike and this time it was in The Arches ntl. park.You gotta squint to see what I saw.
delicate arch in moonlight
I need a camera with a longer exposure to take scenery photos in moonlight, so these are the best that I can do.
hikers in moonlight
What would've been awesome is a panorama in the moonlight of the vistas. I'm sure it's out there if you care to hunt for it. Or else wait 30 more years for the next supermoon and by then the cameras will be awesome!







crags

Monday, November 14, 2016

$99/oz

jesus christ, I'm adrift in Colorado and there are abundant marijuana dispensaries and actually people smoking pot pipes openly in the Walmart parking lot and I looked at one pricing out of curiosity and a fucking 1/8th of the economy strain only costs $15. and an .oz of the best medical grade is $185. A PREMIUM OUNCE! FOR $185! And with medical script the OZ of Gold Standard costs $130. An 1/8th cost $65 in a medical dispensary in Venice, CA so it was like $500 for an ounce. I can't even get a bottle of ibuprofen for $15. $15 is almost Nicaraguan prices. Unbelievable how low the pot prices are and it is all because it is not shipped illegally through the land of beheadings (Mexico). And Colorado has a 10% tax on everything so there is no excuse to keep this shit illegal. these pot taxes paid for the nice rec center I took a shower in the other day. 

holy shit, Mass and Cali and even Nevada all legalized recreational pot recently. Finally this insane prohibition is going to end. I still get drug tested by the lunatic Texans who seem to believe the federal government has no say in what I do to my body but the state government, comprised of babbling zealots, does, so I can not indulge in order to quiet the demonic voices in my head but one day this insanity will end across the country and across the world and we can quietly get stoned and watch the world collapse. A pot smoker can almost drive across the country, coast to coast, and be carrying pot legally in every state he drives through. Only the theologian belt states are holding on to primitive Nixonian ethics because they love to make money off of drug possession fines while a place like Missouri is over run with Crystal Meth labs.

While I have your attention I will give you this message. remember, your butterfly flight through the virtual cupboards of the internet may have a deeper meaning, maybe you are searching for something other than the price of pot. Listen:
Truth is a very high standard. Truth is not a plaything. To tell what is true within ourselves is not to tell what we think; it is not to tell our opinion. It is not to dump the garbage can of our mind onto somebody else. All of that is illusion, distortion, projection. Truth is not unloading our opinions onto someone. That is not truth. Truth is not telling our beliefs about things. That is not truth. Those are ways that we actually hide from truth.
Truth is much more intimate than that. When we tell the truth, it has the sense of a confession. I don’t mean a confession of something bad or wrong, but I mean the sense where we come completely out of hiding. Truth is a simple thing. To speak the truth is to speak from a sense of total and absolute unprotectedness.

Friday, November 11, 2016

Master of Melancholy

Leonard Cohen was honest. His lyrics had some poetic elements but most of all they were honest and he sang honestly. Maybe he decided to memorialize only the melancholy aspects of his life, or maybe he was always melancholy. Either way, he demonstrated that with honesty and a few chords then you can make some music worth listening to. Karen Carpenter can sing melancholy, but I think she faked it. She was a good actress and her voice can capture melancholy in a way that is perhaps more poignant than Cohen, but Cohen was honest and melancholy in the way Bukowski mostly told fake stories but did it in a way that you knew he was bending the facts for the good of the story, not for his own benefit. He was often the villain of his stories but only because the truth wasn't that interesting. Cohen was not as gifted a singer as Dean Martin or Bing Crosby and his songs are not up to Cole Porter's or Burt Bacharach's standards and his melodies are monotonous, but they always suit the words. Cohen had his finger on the pulse of the broken heart. I'd like to record a cover song from his songbook but he deserves his own voice. Go search for a video with him singing. Somewhere, angels have stopped strumming on their harps because the real artist has arrived. Cohen is not smiling, he sits down, takes his time, grabs his guitar, tunes it slowly, strums a minor chord, and sings something true.

Tales from the Road

Survival, no other explanation needed

I don't want to fill the internet with more photos because it diminishes my ability to describe. A picture is worth a thousand words or more, so every picture is 1000 words I can ignore and my brain shrivels and my writing powers ebb.

what you might see in Navajo land

I'm touring the great South West Indian lands. Zuni, Navajo, Pueblo, Hopi, Mescalero Apache. The land was different in 1000AD so it's not fair to imagine how these cultures survived since I would also have to imagine 1000 years difference in climate and grasslands, imagine western farming practices never existed, etc.

Van-Camping
Today we have the Bureau of Land Management basically safeguarding land from illegal squatters but they do tolerate hippies and non-conformists like me for 15 days at a time in any given location. So, a person simply finds a State Forest or BLM land reserve and then finds a road into the land and parks. Usually, the locals have already cut a good road to throw teenager parties off the grid so simply follow the beer cans. Sometimes they are pristine. New Mexico and Colorado and Utah are names the White Man gives to this ancestral land of the First Nation people.

I refrain from describing my experiments in winter heating of the van because I do not want to encourage others from attempting these madman stunts such a...
...putting a woodstove and chimney in your van.



No, it's a bad idea. It's also a bad philosophy because it rejects the nomadic tradition of moving to climates that suit the skin, rather than torturing wild animals so one can better survive the climate one is forced into due to changing seasons. Move south or north or higher or lower to adjust the climate. Do not install a woodstove in your van. You lunatic. What is wrong with you? Well, now that the disclaimer is out of the way I can say that a woodstove is also a bad idea because if you are trying to survive with found fuel then where the hell are you going to find good hardwood and mesquite in a Walmart parking lot? I ask you. You won't. You will find cardboard and white pine wooden pallets behind the Big Lots nearby and you will burn these and they will keep you warm for 20 minutes (insert image of yourself patting your own back) and then vanish like the sweet scent of your first girlfriend's hair shampoo in the summer breeze. You will then freeze and think that Oggy is some kind of sadist for making you put a woodstove in a van and neglected to tell you that it will not keep you warm for even half an hour. Bastard! Well, the deal is that even if you found an unlimited supply of hardwood to burn the stove will have to be the variety to burn sticks.
Small fatsco woodstove in van.
And if you can burn sticks of hardwood in your stove then maybe you can survive a night. But my stove is no designed for sticks of anything. It is a Fatsco Pet stove and it is designed for charcoal. Oh, I burned wood in it for 3 evil winters while processing lobsters in Maine and wandering Labrador but I tell you this was not easy nor comfortable. I knew that the stove was designed for charcoal but I figured where am I going to put a huge bag of charcoal? And do I want charcoal dust on everything? And when I run out of charcoal then I will use wood so why not start with wood?

Well, one day I will describe all the gory details but my experiment with wood is over. The kind of wood that one has easy and free access to is not suitable for heating a van for a few hours let alone an entire night. So, I decided I must experiment with charcoal because it's always around 20 degrees in Navajo November so coal is the next step.

The bags of Charcoal caution the user that it emits carbon monoxide and can not be burned in vehicles. They actually have a drawing of a van with a big X through it so that the illiterate Trump supporter might still grasp that charcoal ought not be burned in their van. BUT, everything that burns emits carbon monoxide, including wood and gasoline, so it's a risk we all take every day because engineering has made it possible to produce tons of CO but not immediately be sick from it. The charcoal manufacturers simply don't want to leave any excuse to get sued and they are not going to say that burning charcoal is perfectly fine in a well ventilated van or in a van with a chimney because that's a ridiculous disclaimer, like car manufacturers telling you not to run your vehicle inside your living room. So, I have a well ventilated van with a functioning chimney and I can burn anything in my stove because all the gases and smoke go straight outside. The combustion heats the cast iron and heats the van and the poison goes up into the air where magic fairies churn it into rainbows and unicorn fetishes.

So, I bought two bags of charcoal and started a fire per normal with some old Honduran newspaper, broken-hearted letters to imaginary lovers and some wax firestarter log. And when I get flames then I poured some charcoal onto the flames and opened the air flow door and the damper on the chimney for full air, and the coal blazed up as expected. I always knew the coal would burn, and I suspected the gas would all vent through the chimney with the smoke but I was suspicious that the time of heating would not justify the expense. In order to fully perform this experiment and post information on the internet where foolish van dwellers will get the wrong idea and try this and die, I purchased a Carbon Monoxide detector. I did not get a smoke alarm because that would go off every time I burn the eggs in the morning. The CO monitor I put right by the chimney so there could be no doubt that it would alert me before I entered the long sleep. The alarm, I should add, does not alert the instant it senses CO, but after 5 minutes or 10 minutes depending on the concentration of CO it senses for that length of time it will sound the alarm.

I was hesitant to fill the stove at first so the first two nights were spent testing the lower limits of functionality. Only after a successful two nights that I did not die and charcoal dust did not annoy me did I fill the chamber completely and let it rip. I will say that it's a success. A properly vented chimney with good draft will vent all the gasses and smoke. The charcoal is a huge improvement over the wood because when I used sticks I had to put all the sticks into the fire standing vertically and they burned to ash in about 5 minutes. Charcoal burns the bottom briquettes first and slowly works up, the ash falls through the grate and the higher lumps of coal slowly fall into the burning chamber. The stove was designed for coal with a slope to feed the chamber so one can fill the chamber completely and know they will not have to push the coal into the chamber since it will roll that way as the chamber empties when the lower lumps have burned to ash. The designer of this stove would say, "No shit, why do you think I say, "USE CHARCOAL" on the instructions." But Oggy must learn the hard way because I don't like doing the right thing until I know what the consequences are from doing the wrong thing.

The only problem is the ash that accumulates from an entire stove full of charcoal actually fills the ash chamber to the point that air flow is reduced. So, I would call this a 6 hour stove. I put a bunch of charcoal in at 9pm and there were still red hot coals at 7am the next morning...but the van was cold because I did not get up at 1am and empty the ash and refill the chamber with new coal. I believe that if I can streamline the disposal of the ash then the stove will keep the van warm all night long so that Oggy does not freeze in Zuni land.

this panoramo is worth more than 1000 words. and the van is actually in there somewhere.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Freezing Again


Fired up the wood stove


If the wood stove is blazing then that means something has gone wrong with Oggy's retirement program. I truly planned on winters in temperate Mexico and summers working in the mountains of the south west. But that all fell apart with a few shady employers and my innocently believing an employer actually has a job when they advertise a help wanted ad. So foolish.

We all need to check our first principles lately.
1) What is it we want,
2) what is it we are doing,
3) and what is it we are actually accomplishing.

These are the questions generally left to the sleaze merchants and the propaganda factories. We let other people give us information packaged in a way that makes us think we are informed, but we are not. We might know what we want (mostly manufactured desires provided by corporate marketing teams), but we are horribly misinformed about what we are actually doing and what we are actually accomplishing.

Take a thing as that thing and nothing else. Start there. Carve wood toggle buttons. In order to carve a wooden toggle button one must know what one wants and what one is doing and what one actually is accomplishing. There are no shortcuts. There are no deceitful propaganda lies and hype. You get exactly the toggle button you deserve. Whatever button you made, is the button you end up with. There are no magic fairies who appear at night to improve the button. And if you pretend you know what you want and then do no research, remain ignorant, then you might claim your conscience is clear when your button is not what you want. You say, "Fuck, I was misinformed." No, you were not informed at all because you did not embrace your desires and the full path to achieve those desires."
About 4 sheep had to die for this vest/blanket and it took me 3 months to finish.

The phrase, "You get what you pay for." can be taken two ways. First...you usually get no greater value then the value that you surrendered....Second...the value you surrendered will be exchanged for exactly what was for sale, and not for anything you believe or wish was for sale. You get what you pay for and the amount you paid is worth the value of what you bought. Simple.

This is the wisdom that I think is not valuable today.
It pays to be stupid because wisdom costs time and if we are collectively dumb then the trick is simply to pretend to be wise and let someone else carve your buttons. And when the button carver's currency crashes, but the button buyer enjoys a cheap fruit cocktail then it's obvious a crime has been committed. But these are things that do no good to write about. I am thinking like an Indian because I am in Zuni and Navajo land. I am not wise enough to know all the details and I suspect that if I were wise enough I would still think it would do no good to write about them. So I state again that we all need to carve some wooden buttons because going back to basics has always been the only path.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Blue Skies

Finally found a spot where the police don't wake me up at 2am.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Why The Media Should Stop Using The Word 'Overdose'

I've been pondering this heroin topic and think I see at least one problem that I'd like to bring to the attention of deep thinkers like myself. The problem is the use or misuse of the word 'overdose' when describing a death from drugs. It's sloppy, which is no big deal in modern journalism, but it is sloppy and also and insult and also misleading and also false information. And in this particular topic the use of the word 'overdose' is so misleading and false that it actually contributes in a way to the problem itself. I don't think journalists intend to magnify the problem because that would mean the journalists actually took some time to think about what shit they are writing and what topic they are writing about, but I suspect they merely write their essays paint-by-number style and give no thought outside of interchanging nouns. One week they write about legal prostitution, and the next week they write about heroin use...the same article format is used in both, total bullshit, and they swap some nouns and think they are big heroes. Well, this kind of sloppy writing is infectious because it makes any asshole who reads the paper some sort of half-assed authority on topics that a journalist made no effort to understand from an intelligent perspective. They merely want to sell copy and they are also probably dumb to begin with so what kind of intelligent examination is a CNN hack capable of really? none.

So, let me explain why they are further magnifying the drug problem with their misuse of the word 'overdose'.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Dinner

Oggy collapsed near the broken carbon-fiber picnic table, amid discarded fusion batteries and plates of protein bar residue from the CHEEP production process. Oggy thought he might be allergic to the residue or to some chemical in the protein bar that was liberated by the process of reduction. He examined one piece of plastic, or was it carbon fiber? Oggy reached out, distracted from all other stimuli, ignoring the feuding rats and the nagging prostitute bawling near the Dispos-all toilet shed. What was this artifact? Was it from a pair of biodegradable wrist cuffs that the police were using during their CHEEP raids? Possibly, but, it may have belonged to a personal communication device, long obsolete and broken down to harvest the circuitry, gold and microchip. Yes, Oggy recognized a hint of a shape where the case of the old digital device curved around the camera lens. That corner had been engineered for that purpose, thought Oggy, and now it lay here among the residue of rat feces and used Ultraviolet sterilization packages for temporary spermicide. Who could have predicted this fate? Not the engineer of the robots who manufactured it nor the drones who shipped it nor the consumer and then the pirates who scoured the landfills to retrieve the broken device and bring it back to the crude labs for disassembly and meltdown. This small portion of the case had broken off and been swept into a bag that later was used to transport donated food or clothing to the shelter. That was probably the timeline of this article of plastic, but it was not a complete timeline and Oggy stared deeply at the plastic shard as he tried to visualize the details, to fill in the gaps in the timeline as far back as when the plastic was in a boiling vat of ingredients waiting to be injected and molded, the workers...was it possible human laborers were needed during that process? It depended on the age of the device. There was a time when robots did not rule the workshop floor and humans still monitored or controlled the machines. That was important because the exact chain of commands that led to the molding of the molten plastic may have been controlled by humans or it may have been automatic, regulated by algorithms and supply demands and production quotas. The molding process itself may have taken place in the evening, or the morning, or on a full moon, or a full moon obscured by clouds or a tropical storm. Which tropical storm? Which moon? What continent? Well, it would be Central America, up until the civil war when the manufacturing was moved to the artificial islands in the Gulf. The timeline was impossible to complete with what little information Oggy had so he experienced a grinding frustration at the inability to fully visualize the lifespan of this piece of plastic. Why was it so complicated? He could see the groove where the circuit board would slide into, the small groove where the circuit board had once been but had been removed in order to harvest the chip and gold. But under what conditions had the board been installed and by whom did the board get removed? What was the person's name? When did the robot laborer get manufactured? What weather conditions were present during the harvesting process? Had that taken place here in Santa Cruz or elsewhere, had the workers been singing, what song were they singing? There were unsolvable mysteries because all Oggy had to speculate on was a piece of plastic no bigger than a Fiver Coin. So many mysteries, so many unsolvable riddles. A rat scampered through the debris, dragging its heavy scrotum over the trash.

"Dinner!" cried a scallion from near the entertainment tube.
The denizens of the shelter ceased their agitated milling and moved as one toward the tube. Oggy still held the piece of plastic and examined the circuit board groove with his finger nail but he watched the residents limp like brain-hungry zombies toward the tube. They gathered in a tight circle with those in the back climbing boxes of discarded fruit to see better. The tube glowed to life and a low murmur replaced the jabbering mosaic of hysteria.

"We had the slow-roasted roast beef," began the solemn gender-fluid voice within the tube. "And it was good. The sauce was not too salty..."

A man near the middle of the audience grinned like a grave-robber and said loudly, "Nothing wrong with salty sauce. I..."

"Shut up! Wait until dinner is over." shouted shrewd voice from within the audience.

The voice from within the tube continued, "...and the mashed potatoes were made with real butter..."

Many of the audience moaned with pleasure and a few murmured, 'butter...'

"I wanted the corn side dish but my husband talked me into getting the green beans and we shared the special summer slaw. It was all delicious. My only complaint was that there wasn't enough bacon in the beans. I give the restaurant 5 stars..."

The tube glowed silently for a moment and then turned off. The audience began to shout for seconds.

"Play it again! We want more!"
"Play the part about the bacon!"
"I want the one where she likes the medium rare steak!"
"I liked yesterday's pizza dinner better!"
"More mashed potatoes!"

Oggy watched with cheeks sagging over his fleshy frown as the audience clapped their wooden limbs and stomped their feet in hysterics until the dinner was served again. Oggy wanted to participate but the circuit board mystery bothered him. What was pure and right in a world where this piece of plastic had become so orphaned after so much love and attention was spent to produce it?

The tube spoke again: "We had the slow-roasted roast beef...."
The audience finished the sentence as one: "...And it was good."

Oggy nodded and whispered, "The roast beef was good because the sauce wasn't too salty." 

He got goosebumps as a twinge of warmth from a genuine memory came back to him, a real memory, not the ones he borrowed at the library, though hazy in image the smell was authentic, and a twist in his lips almost made him look happy.

Monday, October 17, 2016

The Commoditization of Everything

God help you if you need a job in America. The days where you applied for an open job position and then learned if you were hired or not are long gone. In its place is a step by step journey through online form purgatory and an eventual descent into digital limbo. My theory, that deserves more research, is that every step in the employment process has been commoditized or turned into a money-making enterprise. I me an that in the old days you would go to a job location and speak to a HR associate who would give you an application. The HR associate worked for the company hiring and they were actually interested in filling the job opening. That is no longer the case because of the ridiculous regulations involved in Human Resources became a career in itself, a full-time job with complicated details that overwhelmed a normal HR department. The company got sick of keeping up with all the insurance/medical/workmans comp/drug screening/payroll that they outsourced that side of the business to HR management firms that manage employees for other companies. This has been a trend for at least 20 years and confirmed by the fact the biggest employers are temp agencies. Temp agencies actually have no jobs, they do nothing, except they manage the HR department. That's all they do. They pimp their brothel of employees (bums sleeping in their lobby) to real companies. Temp agencies manage employees and deal with payroll and hiring and firing and sick leave and insurance and all the tedious bullshit that a respectable company like Apple or Ford does manage on their own. But smaller engineering firms and construction companies can not handle the turnover of temp employees so they outsource that to temp agencies. I'm not sure what these people process since the application is online and I have become my own data entry tech, but let's assume they do some fact checking and calling my references. It's simple and caused by tumor-like growth in the HR regulation department. No one is to blame, but let me tell you what this causes.

Because each step in the hiring process has been outsourced and I am beginning to suspect that the outsourced companies that are responsible for the HR department are now actually sub-outsourcing further elements of their responsibilities, every step in the process now makes someone a little bit of money...but doesn't end up with a person being hired because that's totally separate from their objective. It's like the high-risk mortgage commodities market except in the form of job applications. I don't know much about the mortgage meltdown of 2008 but I know folks were making money off of flim-flam and that is what is happening with the temp agency market. Let me defend this theory in case someone out there with the ethics of Mickey Mouse wants to make some money....

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Deep thoughts

U know what the difference is between individual people belonging "officially" to individual nations and individual people belonging to one united citizenship of Earth?  Paperwork. A bunch of forms with your name on them processed until someone says you belong to another country. It's pitiful. Nationality is defined by paperwork and an obsession over invisible geographic lines.

Also, conversations about frivolous emotional irrelevant events are useless. Your health is the most important thing you will deal with followed by the health of people close to you. That's where the majority of our conversations should focus. The obsession with emotional triggers is blatant manipulation by crazed affiliate marketing websites. They merely studied Nazi propaganda techniques and Bernays-ian psychological manipulation and applied that to their content so an audience would be trapped in a happy/sad cycle. Ponderous. Focus on your health, ignore 90% of every media source, cultivate a trade/skill, financially support businesses you have close affiliation with. That's it.

Friday, October 14, 2016

B Goode


Another song from the Parking Lot Sessions. This time a slow cover of the popular blues tune about an illiterate guitarist from Louisiana. Johnny B Good by Chuck Berry

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Sangria Blues

I made it easier for all my fans in the UAE to make this your screensaver.




The Sangria Blues is yet another song inspired by living in the Walmart Parking lot. I just now notice that I can see the Walmart sign over my left shoulder. classic. As I have proposed, we are all living in the 'Walmart Parking lot', but only I live in the official Walmart Parking lot. But do not deceive yourself that you live outside the parking lot. No, it's a big lot. And the junkies and nickle prostitutes, the worn car parts and flea dogs and puppies and abused diaper pails are your neighbors. Some people park in a distant space, and some people park near the Walmart door, but everyone is in the parking lot, bathed by the blue neon sign. Sangria is in the wine section, near the Dairy fridges. There are two architectural layouts of Walmarts. One has the dairy and wine on the right hand of the store, and the other has the dairy and wine on the left hand. I like the 'gender neutral' bathrooms in the back because I can sponge bath my ass crack in private there. Enjoy the song and remember to turn the light off on your way out. If my guitar sounds odd it is because this is my old Seagull that I glued the bridge back on with a hacksaw, and when I put a set of light strings on I found the G string was missing from some long distant patch job. And I had given away the original full set to a traveling band of gutter punks destined for New Orleans...so I had to take a bus into the Alamo district to find a spare 23 gauge string to complete the set. The guitar sounds good enough for the Sangria and Walmart parking lot crowd.


Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Drubk and disorderly

The details are fucked. A man saod he would kill everyone in taco town. "Where is my shit?" This taco town in the place to b tonight. I am going to stay until the massacre and then live blog it with bilingual annotations. Snake skin boots and ego roots.
Oggy, watching the drama unfold as police, white trash and Taco town employees fight like rats over a piece of greasy fried chicken.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Things Doc Sends Me



I hung out with Doc in Texas in October 2016. He lived in a tarp hut that he pulled in his trailer on a bicycle. the bicycle motor was having problems and I almost let it go since I'm seldom in a situation where I can help anyone, but I am curious about those motors so I asked if he needed some help. And we cleaned the carburetor and it was ok, then we took the clutch apart and not only were the friction pads worn down to absolutely nothing, but one of the springs had broken and embedded into the clutch bell, so it had only 2 of the 3 clutch pads and the remaining two were worn out. Well, it was a surprise it ran at all. And he ordered a new clutch pad assembly...and then we dug into the transmission after the whole mechanism stopped turning and found that the two roller bearings on the clutch bell had worn out completely and all the bearing balls had fallen out after the retainer ring crumbled. This was caused by back pressure from the drive belt that can't really be adjusted.

I had dreams of a reality show where I go around the country helping people who live in their vans get the thing fixed up so they can drive again, doing it all in parking lots, on the side of roads, in snow, getting to know the owners in their own habitat, and fixing my van in the process too. It would be interesting, but of course no network has contacted me yet so this is the next best thing....

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Lack of Privacy

I learned how to repair shoes in Nicaragua so I bought some more time for my worn out running sneakers. The trick is to do it all on the side of a busy street under a shade tree. Americans throw too much away, waste frivolously and irresponsibly. The waste is out of control.

Can you pick which Jerk Hook is Guatemalan and which one is Nicaraguan? The difference is 80 years of U.S. Marines occupying your country and keeping it a defacto slave plantation to produce cheap fruit.

The heat loosened the glue of my bridge, so I stretched it open with overtight guitar strings, rammed a shim in the crack, forced some glue in there by standing the guitar on end and shoving a piece of plastic in and out...

...then totally panicked when my plan to clamp it failed because the C-clamp was half an inch too short. What followed was typical Oggy, shirtless in a public parking lot, tossing everything around to find some combination that will work before the glue dries. Ended up using my suspension strap rig, two wooden shims, and an old metal hacksaw. This guitar is my oldest possession but the thin tone does not warrant a $200 bill to pay a pro luthier to do this in a more pretty and private manner. All that matters is sufficient glue and strong clamps for an hour.


Friday, October 7, 2016

Trespassers Shall Be Shot


Another morning, another humiliating encounter with tattooed law enforcement. Fucking hell, every day I have to get frisked and searched and feed the same lines to the police. Unbelievable. And lately I am getting sloppy and staying in the Walmart parking lot after 8am. A decent hobo would leave at 6 or 6:30 and be gone before the day manager gets to work. But I got sloppy because I was drinking boxed wine in the parking lot last night, actually drinking enough boxed red wine to get drunk and ended up talking to a truck tow driver who was towing a long flatbed that had run into a wall and bent the rim so badly that it could not be replaced without cutting it off, and no welder could come out so he was going to drag the flatbed 15 miles, but the axle had come loose so the wheels of the front axle had to be chained up or else they would slide back and rub the back wheels and cause even more havoc. And then I took a full shower in the fucking Walmart parking lot, shampooing my hair, actually cutting my hair a little, drinking red wine, singing Western Swing songs. Insane and dangerous, disrespecful, waving to shoppers like we were close neighbors. I figure, fuck it, this country has gone to shit and if a guy can't wash his ass crack in a Walmart parking lot in full view of everyone in San Antonio Texas then what good is anything? I do not care. I am going to get hassled and charged with trespassing no matter what I do so why should I hide, why should I respect anything in this god forsaken hell? Respect is earned and whatafuckinburger deserves no respect. Police patrol like terminator drones, I piss in a jug and a guy in wheelchair with a colostomy bag has to empty the bag into a plot of grass. Is there any difference? Dogs shit and piss by the millions. So I gotta piss and shit in bags and shower next to a trash can in a parking lot. This is life. I don't like over priced bullshit hotels with false smiles and plastic wrapping on the toilet. I'm more Texan than a Texan. It's Oggy Hunting Season every single day and the police have me targeted for extermination. So I gotta sleep in a shade tree hammock and shit in a bag and get drunk and shower in a parking lot. So what? Covered wagon immigrants had it hard too. Texas was populated by folks from Tennessee who were invited by recent Mexican president to tame northern Mexico in exchange for land. It was technically Mexico and folks from Tenn. came here to be Mexican and kill Comanche. Well, they did the job so well that they decided they didn't want to be Mexican and they didn't want to be American either. They wanted a Texas Republic. And not long after they became a Lone Star republic they joined the Confederacy. And then they joined the Union because the money was better. SO DO NOT SHOVE YOUR FUCKING COP NOSE IN MY FACE AND CONDESCEND TO HUMILIATE ME LIKE I AM SOME KIND OF FUCKING SCUMBAG! This land was populated exactly by non-conformist vagabonds like myself and assholes later came and milked the fat tit of oil production to provide your paycheck and your nice tiger tattoos on your big bicep ego inflation. You want to define this land as Texan? Ok. It's just words, like pancakes only belong as breakfast food. Those are the words of assholes. It's dirt and grass and cow shit and you can call it whatever you want but when I have to wash my ass crack then I will do that wherever I please because that is what people do.

So I slept late, not hungover, but not feeling 100% right either, and the Walmart manager wakes me up banging on the van and I'm naked and get up. 
"You gotta get off the property!"
"Fine, fine. Whatever. I was a customer, you know." And I sort of laugh because I bought boxed wine with my last $3.22 in cash, drank it in the parking lot while I washed my hair wearing a peyote necklace, got drunk, and then danced around the parking lot with no shirt... but fuck him. I was still technically a customer.
"I don't care. This isn't a hotel. I got police coming and tow trucks."
"Wow. Y'all sound serious. I guess I'll move along." I figure he is bluffing, of course at that very second four police cruisers and tow trucks show up like they think they are Magnum P.I. with guns blazing to capture Al Capone. Oh, fucking Jesus, Joseph and Ezekiel. The same routine. Out of the van! Hands behind your back! Any drugs? Any weapons? What are you doing here? Why don't you have a Texas license? If you don't have an address then where do you work? You think this is funny? Are you drunk right now? Disdain and humiliation are thick on the cop's lips. Blah fucking blah. Again and again, hundreds and hundreds of police encounters.

Whatever.
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.