In Closing

The adventure of a lifetime isn't supposed to mean a lifetime of one, never-ending adventure. There has to be a beginning, middle, and an end. Or else the adventure and the life merge into an indistinguishable blob that is neither life nor an adventure. 

The road takes a toll on one's heart and body. The soul may ripen with age, but the skin wrinkles, the hair turns white, the beard grizzles, the organs shrivel and decay. I remember being able to type accurately and furiously as the library was closing and the librarian was kicking me and the other homeless men into the streets of Santa Monica, typing with the words firing from my fingers, with the passion and the fearlessness of a man in search of a voice, a man who may have found the voice he was searching for, but was pushing the limits. Now I have to spell check the word 'Milk'.

Speaking of Beginnings, Middles, and Ends... I will recollect my three ghosts of travel, the moments, (one could call them eras since I'm talking about a decade of time). The beginning of the Man in The Van was not the first post, nor the tenth, because I think those were attempts to discover my blogging persona. The beginning was when I morphed into the honest, unaffected asshole one sees today. That was probably on the sands of Mexico, La Paz...summer of 2009. The van's timing cover gasket blew out and required a full dis-assembly of the front of the engine in the parking space I had just rented at a house. It was embarrassing that the second day I met that family I was neck deep in grease, but such is life. I had to fix that gasket twice because there are two layers of gaskets and the deepest one was the one that failed. (Hey, 10 years later it's never needed adjustment.) The Mexican journey was always one that could collapse at any second. I planned to spend one year in Mexico, travel towards Guatemala and abandon the van when it failed me. But I felt comfortable in La Paz up until the insane summer heat arrived and, from apathy and malaise, I did not get on the ferry to mainland Mexico. The heat drove me quite mad until I only dreamt of northern climate, the coolness of trees. Also, I had planned badly for the trip as my bank card expired and I didn't have access to any money. So I drove north without ever grasping how the persona of the blog had been adopted without my being aware. I wasn't acting anymore. Life in the van had become my life, it was not a phase anymore. I had faced mechanical challenges in desperate times in harsh conditions and I had been forced to embrace the challenge, and the process shed my previous persona that treated the van as a separate, 8 cylinder, character-rich conveyance. By the time I drove north from La Paz, the van was a part of me and that marked the beginning of the journey. Our fates had become inseparable.

Beyond The Sunset

The sun sets on another year and 2019 should be the last for this blog. I'll motivate myself to write a closing essay and that is it. Y'all can kiss my ass! No, I'm kidding. The 3 readers who have followed me faithfully for the past 10 years are loyal. Demented and sad...but loyal. All good things must end but before I go I want to recapitulate my experience. The new year means nothing much to me. I'm unemployed, collecting unemployment checks for the first time in my life and should have time to reflect and ponder but I'm searching for a home where I can hang my Stetson hat and work on motorcycles without gravel in my knees. It's the kind of activity most people do in their 30s but I waited until I was 50 and it won't interest anyone since youth have disdain for home ownership and my elders have disdain for people who wait so long to be an adult. I'm looking for a house and work in a time of despair and division. Enemies, I could stab at thee from Hell's Heart, but the new year is a time to turn the page on the failures and trespasses of last year. What has happened has happened, and wisdom comes at a price greater than Dollar General's discount rack. Collect your check and take the ride.

Decennial

I am aware that my blog is approaching its Tenth Year anniversary. I embarked on this journey with El Conquistador for one year exploration of The Baja Peninsula. I suspected the van would not survive the trip or maybe I wouldn't survive the trip either. To sum up my mindset at that time requires some ad lib and reliance on foggy memories but I recall my disillusionment with the status quo was very high. Nearly 5 years on the fringes of Los Angeles entertainment industry confirmed that all my idealistic hopes and starry-eyed artistic visions were obsolete. Drugs and underage sex were the main commodities in Los Angeles and I wrote a script about Henry David Thoreau's life on Walden Pond. The timing was not right. The economy collapsed along with the fraudulent housing mortgage scheme. Bush danced off into the sunset and Obama arrived with Hope that I suspected was a big scam. I knew that drugs and underage sex were all that kept Los Angeles humming and I didn't see Obama embracing that reality. Obama represented the collective delusion. Everyone I knew was stoned all the time. It was at the point that I knew no one who was ever sober and I started to question the definition of sobriety when no one is not under the influence. Doesn't the definition change? Isn't sobriety then defined as only moderately influenced by drugs? If one still knows they are human and on earth then that's sober. If they believe they are an Alien transplant whose real home is Atlantis then that is the new 'high'. If you snort cocaine, smoke pot and try to have sex with every warm body that walks in your office then you have embraced the status quo; you fit the paradigm and the paradigm rewards conformists.

Losing Bobby

It's a sad day, but the #1 post I ever made involved Bobby Peru from David Lynch's movie Wild at Heart is now gone. I took a screen capture of Bobby throttling Peanut (Laura Dern). It was frivolous at the time, the scene had so much character and Bobby is who I consider is the most evil villain in cinema. And that silly screen capture became the single biggest reason anyone ever came to this self-absorbed pity fest. I took it down once before because I didn't think it sent the right message about my blog. Then I put it back up again because I thought it was sort of clever. Then I made a .gif animation of Bobby and that became popular too. I didn't even care that this is blatant copyright infringement.

Well, I spent some time in Guatemala with a television and the violence against women or women with guns, or women being slapped or women being raped or killed or chased was completely out of control. It was actually like a scene from Wild at Heart where every radio station is news about a beheading or some ghastly tragedy and Peanut goes crazy and then Sailor finds a rock station and they dance in the desert. Every channel I turned on involved a woman being slapped or assaulted or else a woman cop dressed in skin tight slacks and 2 inch heels and a huge perm of hair gunning someone down in cold blood. It simply became too much. Maybe I am sensitive again to the insane amount of violence on television and y'all will think this is being prudish. But I saw that the Bobby Peru photo was still getting traffic and I decided the only way to purge it would be to delete the whole post and any post I had of Bobby menacing poor Peanut. I love that movie, and I love Lynch and the characters are not generic and the violence is not frivolous; it is a smart film, violence is not glorified or used gratuitously in it, but I can't leave that photo up anymore. It makes no difference because surely someone copied it off my page and it will be out there beyond my control along with a million other screen captures, or someone could recreate it in about two minutes, but I renounce it. I renounce the casual use of violence on television. I boycott all commercial advertisers who encourage such filth. I do not think they should be censored; I believe they should only broadcast movies about beauty and animals. They should choose life. Does violence on television cause violence in real life? Yes, the violence on television IS violence against the viewer but mankind loves to experiment with himself. The rage and distress the viewer feels is violence. Sometimes we want that, but we are now being overdosed. Does that rage and distress translate to acts of violence against people who didn't even watch the television? How can it not? Yes, victims tend to attack others, even those who are not the source of the attack. It's a chain reaction.

Does it matter to my blog? No. It's only a minor detail that I share with you as part of my due diligence. I deleted some other posts that I decided were in bad taste or else the topic was too tasteless to promote. Goodnight, Bobby Peru. You blew your head off after the bank robbery went bad, but that doesn't mean I will worship your evil here. Rot in hell you repulsive monster. I love you, Peanut.

Key Problems

I don't know what it is with me and broken computer keyboards but this is the second one that has failed me and required emergency repair so I can continue to expose my emotionally traumatic past.

I really suspected it was the power wire.

I don't abuse this keyboard at all although if it had eyes I'm sure it would be in therapy. Maybe it's trying to kill itself so it doesn't have to watch me torture myself anymore. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. But it was connecting and disconnecting randomly and I dreaded a BIOS update and all the keyboards in Latin America are not the same so I would have trouble I don't want. Spanish keyboards have bizarre symbols and if I told you want I have to do to make the @ symbol on a Spanish Keyboard you would laugh in my face. It requires two people. And simply making " quotation marks involves three different key shortcuts, and then the quotation marks do not appear until you type a letter. There are upside down question marks that begin a question. Ctrl+A doesn't do shit to select all the text. No. And Ctrl+T (todos) also doesn't do shit.  a comma is where the period normally is. In short, I had to fix this fucking keyboard that I bought in a pawn store in Maine many moons ago. I manipulated the cable and it seemed that either the software was dropping the keyboard exactly when I twisted the cable or else the cable had broken inside the housing, which has never happened to my keyboard before. This was a trip down memory lane into shielded cable, ground wires, data, power, neutral, strain relief, dsub pins, engineer drawing, sweating vodka while I fucked up a semi-conductor cable harness. God, the awful things I've done to survive. Bunch of bullshit but it helped me avoid buying a new keyboard and learning the Latin American layout.

That plastic block is called a strain relief and you can see how well it worked because only one wire broke.

Well, I took the keyboard to an internet shop where I print out my Flintstones Theme Jazz charts and plugged it in and it didn't work there either. Then I tug on the wires and the red one pulls right out. So that's a clue. And it broke right next to the strain relief and for a week or two it was hanging on by a thread and if I held the keyboard perfectly it would power up, but that thread broke finally and would only reconnect when I twisted the wires. Even though it's like .7mA of current the red power wire does succumb to heat over time and also the strain of repeatedly typing "Cheerleader Porn" could have been too much to tolerate. I feel bad for the keyboard, but the world is full of grief these days and we all have to deal with bullshit.

Don't cut the shield or the ground wire that surround the main wires. Split the shield in half and then pull the metallic-wrapped 4 wires out. Take the wrapping off and check for continuity. Cutting the ground wires won't kill the power but it will allow a short to ground to kill your computer.

The lesson is that things can be fixed but at this point it doesn't matter if you buy another brand new keyboard.

Artificial Intelligence?

I'm avoiding ice cream after some recent dental scares

Computers are pretty cool. They are artificial intelligence, right? I mean, technically? You input information and then they will sort that information depending on parameters or questions you ask. That's intelligent, right? It's more than I'm capable of on most days. Well, sometimes we have artificial so intelligent that we have to outsmart it to prove that we are not also artificial intelligence. Isn't that odd? It's like Skynet. You only have to do these word scrambles if you want to comment using a google approved identity. But I have an option you can comment anonymously and I think it works ok. I want honesty most of all and I feel I can delete anything without any loss of communication because you know you typed it and I had to read it in order to delete it so the point was made. But I felt it no longer belonged in the internet, but it's still in my head and that counts for something in this fucked up world.
I want to apologize to anyone who has to answer this kind of matching game: select all ice cream> What the fuck is this? to make a comment I have to prove I'm human and I'm going to do that by comparing pictures of food and other things and determine which are ice cream and which are cakes or platters of fruit? This really irked me but I have no control over it as the spam filter is automatic. Is every fucking thing I do going to involve jumping through hoops to prove I'm human?

New Look

double spacing in blogspot "sand dollar" theme. html is not like horseshoes or hand grenades: close isn't good enough.

It took a little prodding from my many fans* but I tracked down the line where the line-height should be and added the 2.2em and now the space should be double. I don't know why I couldn't find it the other day, or maybe I found it and didn't have the 'em' after the 2.2 or had a space or lacked a }closed bracket or semi-colon. html is a little maddening and obviously I'm already tortured by the infinite details of living so I try to avoid it. I am also experimenting with a different background color, shit brown, in order to make the text less glaring. I don't love it but I'm not a designer at heart. The reason The Onion and CNN and other sites get away with a white background is because they only have about 2 paragraphs of text and the videos start to play automatically and video is easier on the eyes than reading. I don't love this theme but I also don't like change so I think we're stuck with it. The status quo is easier to accept.

Took some trial and error but I think I moved the column in and got more text on one line.

*It's not that I care what my readers think, but in this case I happened to agree.

Advice on Living in A Van

I don't recommend anyone live in a van. Let's get that out of the way first. Living in a van is reactive, it's a symptom of a greater disease that's too complicated to discuss here. Suffice to say, that society or urban living is the status quo, yet deeply unsatisfactory to many. So, the reaction is to combine urban living with a nomadic lifestyle in a modern conveyance. Migrating from one urban environment to another, or within one urban environment, alone, simplified to only what a covered wagon can carry, but driving a gas car. It makes no sense. Migrants in covered wagons were not migrating endlessly. They did live in and out of their covered wagon, but it was a necessity of the times. Now we're combining the 1860 era covered wagon lifestyle inside a modern vehicle, but literally driving in the tracks of history, either in reverse or otherwise. What the fuck? It's a messy solution and I can justify it because I intend to deconstruct the larger disease by providing myself isolation to focus. That's the only justification I can accept: you desire to withdraw from society. The reason you want to withdraw can be your own. The reasons are all variations of the same quest for contentment and belonging, contradicted by a suspicion you don't belong. I get it. But if this is not your reason then you will be distressed to learn that's what's going to happen no matter what you want. You will withdraw, you will drift, you will migrant, you won't belong, and that's why I don't recommend you choose to live in a van. You are choosing exile whether you think you are or not.

Now, if you want exile, as I do, then you have no choice because other styles of living will draw you back to society. But living in a van will alienate you from the bulk of society and it may be irreversible. I prefer to warn people of what they might be getting themselves into rather than tell them how to stay warm in the winter. Exile is the fate that waits for the one who lives in a van.

When I started the van blog in 2008 I was not aware of any online community of van dwellers reporting their experiences. Am I a pioneer? That's for history to judge. I've lived in vehicles off and on for 20 years, but ever since the covered wagon people have been living in vehicles. But the idea of reporting on the lifestyle is very new because except for a few rare essays that record the lifestyle, no one could very well film their entire life, edit it, and upload it to a public theater that anyone can watch at any time. Well, that's now possible. It was possible probably as early as 2006, when tube video formats began. Well, that would mean I was a 1st generation van blogger because 2007 was probably the earliest anyone had the idea to video and write a diary about living in a van, and one year later I made my first entry without having seen a single example of someone else doing something similar. In fact, I remember blogging about my plans to move into a van on a totally different blog, and it crossed my mind that with my digital camera and the video option on blogger, which I had lazily been updating since I moved to Los Angeles in 2004. So, the acceleration is obvious: 2004-first Oggy Blog. 2007-first easy youtube option. 2008 - Oggy moves into van and begins to blog about life in van for next 8 years. 2016 - Hundreds and hundreds of van dwelling bloggers actually funding their trip with donations. I didn't consider starting a channel on youtube because I am a writer and the video aspect was more for the music and some skits I was developing. I prefer the format of blogs to write essays, long form discussions and analysis. But I also accept this was bad instincts on my part. youtube channels with interesting videos, characters, skits, good music and good footage is the accepted model to gain an audience. If your desire is to 'go viral' then youtube is the way to do it, refine your abilities to connect via video essays or skits. As a writer I want to think the internet is a means to communicate longer essays, but this is not true in the case of van dwelling. People in general are visual, and van dwelling has the element of action that only video can capture. The deeper analysis is possible through an essay, but only if the writing is good. I wonder if my writing will last as digital cave scrawling. I don't know. I've seen a lot of average attempts to be entertaining...that reminds me of my first mandate: entertain. When I started the blog I had to decide how I was going to frame the entries. What was my attitude? At first it was theatrical, and false. I was trying a personality out that I thought might be entertaining. I only leave those posts published to demonstrate my humble beginnings. I was aiming for a comedy skit but the first posts seem more desperate and false. Being homeless reduced the way I could write, and I had no mobile access so everything involved a visit to the library for free internet access. It was tedious, nothing like today where kids post their morning videos instantly, live chatting their breakfast, instantly edit videos. It took me hours to post anything and it involved many attempts to upload the video and them embed the link. It didn't work many times and required more than one attempt. It was new and tedious and I only persevered because I thought it would be at least a good record of my origins with the van so I could look back on it. I thought the idea itself had potential but that fortune would never make my blog popular. Maybe my blog isn't popular because I write too much, too many words, not entertaining enough for the short attention span. Yes, I can see that.

I don't ever see myself accepting donations because it poisons my creativity. I'm not above taking money, but the idea distracts me and affects my thought process and creative output. So, the cost is not worth the benefit.

I'm rambling because it's late and I've become nocturnal and there is mold growing on my ego and I want to memorize the melody to Tangerine, and I love Nat King Cole.

laptop

this old IBM laptop computer has finally played its last porn clip. So the man in the van will soon be signing off this blog. I wanted to unplug this year anyway. No more wires and digital communication and batteries. It's gotten completely crazy. So if I find another laptop then I'll post some more but I won't be looking. What more could I say anyway? Oh look at the ocean. look at the Mexican people. boring.
I don't foresee myself riding a moped to an internet cafe so I can post about riding a moped to an internet cafe. that makes no sense. there is no internet connectivity on remote beaches in Baja. and no power.
better to just live day to day and no more virtual history that only gets mocked to begin with.
and no one should be wasting their time looking at these rants either. I mean really. You have to be ashamed of yourself to watch these inane rants. Or you have to be like Eddie and have a job that pays you to be unproductive...in which case you should still be ashamed of yourself. look at the state of America. we're a third world nation...we're slaves to so many different Ponzi schemes, the biggest one is called social security...but who cares as long as the fake pay checks still cash out? California is flat broke but proudly still feeds prisoners with food that even the richest governor can't actually afford...because his money doesn't exist. Instead of wasting your time looking at the internet go read Atlas Shrugged. What is money really worth? What does it actually represent? Go find out something useful that will do your kids some good in 2050. Go learn a skill like farming. Don't believe anyone with a rolex on. Believe a man with dirt under his nails. Or learn to believe in yourself. Be self reliant.