QO-1922449-aa

That's the Ford part number for a hood latch on an Explorer.
I learned that today as part of my ongoing project to chase my dream. Yes, the very day I quit my job assembling bikes my temp agency, the temp agency I haven't heard from in 3 months, calls and asks me if I want to work today.
I figure this is just Karma telling me that I was born to be pharaoh's slave and I should just adjust.
The best thing about Temp agency jobs is that as soon as I walk out the door at the end of the day I mutter to myself "I quit this shit eating job. I wouldn't come back here for a million dollars."
No one can hear me, and in fact my assignment has already ended (and deeply regretted by all parties) but still it is satisfying.
The pharaoh's slave didn't have that option. to quit. to say fuck this to the Pharaoh. But the man in the van does have this option and he will exercise it often. Get another monkey to count your door handles and gaskets and 75W150 gear oil containers. No me. Not this man.

Of course I didn't know that was where I was going when I accepted the job. I just took it on spec because that's the kind of guy I am. Maybe I'll count beans and maybe I'll move boxes. A beggar can't choose, but he can quit.
So it turned out to be Carma...not Karma that brought me back to work for one day at the Santa Monica Ford Dealership.
NOW I'm ready to start chasing the dream.* This time I'm serious.

The video upload function has had some issues and I've got a good video review of The day The Earth Stood Still in my archives. I'm not sure it will ever make it live. Maybe I've reached the limit of videos or maybe this internet connection is so tainted by porn that it is useless. Who knows? Don't see that movie unless you like pandering over budget bullshit with "lessons" stuck in the middle of a perfectly average movie. awful!

*The dream looks something like this

Re: Job Possibility

They should get someone with care-giver experience and who wants a long term agreement, not a fly-by-night gypsy like myself.
With the number of musical instruments I plan on getting for my next apartment I think I should live alone. Or do you want to live beneath a full acoustic drum kit?
My Christmas flu came right on time, reminding me why I planned on getting out of here before Christmas. I could blame my living situation but these germs found me for the last 5 years no matter where I lived. But sleeping in a refrigerator and working in a garden shed just makes the illness more miserable. Then a bike fell off the bike stand onto my big toe. 4 days left but I don't know if I'll make it. The conditions at Target are so unnatural I can't begin to describe them. To be surrounded by walls of junk thirty or forty feet high is unsettling. It's all brand new but reeks of junk. It's controlled chaos every day of the year. Target is very lucky for immigrants who will take $8 an hour to deal with that mayhem every day. It's a job that shouldn't be done but it's in high demand. I guess I'm the exception to question the conditions. And Impact really pulled a fast one when they got their workers to do their own accounting paperwork, drive their own cars, keep their own time, file their own orders, fax everything, in addition to the job of assembling furniture and bikes. If one thing goes wrong, guess who loses money? The key is keeping the employees separate and isolated. Don't let them organize. In other states the employee even has to rent the tools. Ha! Who said sharecropping was dead?
I plan to do the absolute minimum this week. No working class hero here.
All for now.

trapped in Target

In a new low for this shitty job I drove all the way downtown, 7th and Union, some bullshit law office wanted a new desk and file cabinets. I swear I'd be better off walking around to all the law offices in a square mile (there are hundreds) and giving them a card that says "Assemble Any Item" that's it. Charge half as much as they do at Impact and I get to be Johnny on the Spot in my own area. that would be better.
Of course I drive 12 miles to get to the office and the security people would not let me up because the insurance paper had not been filed. so that's a bust. All that driving. Useless.
Now my dispatcher tells me I can go to Cudahy, way the hell over by Bell gardens near. The conversation on the phone with the dispatcher was like this.

"You want to go to a Kamrt. They have more bikes than we originally thought."
I look out at the desolate asphalt landscape and sigh. I gotta be the hero.
"Ok. where is it."
"In Cudahy."
I wince. He might as well say "Kill Whitey Springs"
"That out east?"
"Yes, near Bell Gardens."
"Ok. Remind me how to get there."
"You take the 110 to...where are you?"
"7th and Union. Downtown."
"Take the 110 to the 10."
"Ok."
"To the 710."
"Ok."
"South on the 710. Don't go to the 115. That's too far."
"Right."
"South on the 710 to Cudahy. To Atlantic. 8100 Atlantic."
"So south on the 110. To the 10. East on the 10. To the 710. south on the 710. Got it. What's the work order?"
"998889."
"That'll take an hour."
"I gave you until 1."
(It's 10. At 1pm they will put out a phone call to me if I haven't signed in yet.)
Ok.

So I go and it takes an hour (It's 6 miles away but, you know, traffic and accidents and the car overheating and an attempted car jacking...)

I get there and can say with certainty that Kmart 3337 is where Huffy bikes go to die. this old wood floor warehouse up a conveyor belt and bullshit. I set up shop and proceed to build one bike an hour for four hours. These bikes are so poorly made and the tires are completely twisted and the parts are falling off them that I spend more time searching the floor for parts that may have fallen out of the broken boxes. Awful.
Fernando, another tech, tells me stories of ten years ago when Huffy was in Ohio and made their bikes here. ha! That is a long time ago as these bikes are now made in China and are complete crap. They get ridden once or twice and then returned where the parts will never arrive. Awful. So this is where Huffy bikes go to die. Fernando shakes his head and says these bikes are the worst of the worst and this store is the worst of the worst.
" I haven't been here in two years and there are still the same bikes waiting to be repaired."

I felt it was an insult to accept $12 for my work so I just threw my paperwork away and gave the bikes for free. to accept money for that work would have been saying that I thought it had value but when I KNOW those bikes can never be ridden more than a block or two without falling apart then I know that these bikes were not worth assembling, but I assembled them anyway, and that was my mistake, my sin. So I shouldn't be rewarded for it. That Kmart was a slummy, rotten, evil place. I wanted nothing from them.

the next day I got sent back to my old Target in Culver City and wound up in a garden shed with the busted or defective christmas wreaths and broken toys. Awful. The place closed early and there I was building these bikes in the cold and damp and dark. christmas eve. I kept thinking, why should I go home and feel sorry for myself in that broken down van? Why bother? Well, because the Target had closed and now I was trapped in a cold garden shed.
It just gets worse and worse with this job.

Just a plug for Pandora.com. I am listening to Connie Francis radio and am loving it. Linda Scott. Ricky Nelson. Dusty Springfield. Elvis. It don't get better than that and the station pics songs and artists based on what YOU like and I must say they are doing pretty good.
merry christmas everyone!

casita fireplace

http://www.ci.glendale.ca.us/parks/casa_adobe.asp
it is called the casa adobe de san rafael. It has a "Monterrey corridor" a fancy name for a covered porch. I like it. I also like square houses with a courtyard in the middle. That's class.
I went to the Casa Adobe because it was just down the street from the clinic I went for my surgery and it was the only green square on the map. I didn't think the map was right until I opened the old wrought iron gate and stepped back in time. Very nice. I want to recreate this fireplace my own house one day.
Glendale was a strange place but this one historic building made the experience good. It's the real California to me because it's like a ranch. Something out of a Steinbeck book.

Best Christmas Story Ever

Best Christmas Story ever —
My brother was spending his first Christmas in Iraq during the gulf war in 1990-1991. There was a great build up to this war if you remember with Bush Senior really laying it on and Saddam calling for the "Mother of all wars" Remember? We thought Iraq had some great arsenal but it turned out to be a house of cards. Saddam swung on the end of a rope some 18 years later, but that's beside the point.
My brother was going off to Iraq to cover the war and no one knew if he was coming back. In fact, my father considered him dead already.
So pops would shuffle around the house, deeply depressed while I slept on the couch, crippled by a foot injury which had dashed all hopes I had of becoming a professional baseball player. My baseball glove, probably a Christmas gift years earlier, collected dust, utterly useless like my foot.
My pops would pass me in the morning and give me one of those smiles that a dying dog gives when its stomach ulcerates. I wanted to kill my father, to put him out of his misery but I was too weak and suicidal.
"How did you sleep?" my father would ask.
"I didn't sleep. I lay here thinking about what a waste everything is."
I had heard my father shuffle to the bathroom to piss all night long. he hadn't slept either.
"Well aren't you a ray of sunshine?"
"Keep mocking me. Go ahead."
"I wonder what Brooklyn is doing."
Brooklyn is my brother. My dad said this with the tone of voice someone reserves for a wake.
"Probably loading his automatic rifle to kill some loitering kids."
I meant it. That's what the army actually did anyway. Dropping death on innocents every Christmas.
"God damn it. You think you know everything."
My dad was pissed. His face got red. He got in my face.
"You don't know what you are talking about!"
I turned away.
"Ok, dad. Sure. You're right. Whatever. Go on."
I waved my hand at him, taunting him like a little kid. He slapped my arm and raised his fist.
"You don't know a THING!" he yelled. "You know nothing. NOTHING!"
His fist shook in the air between us. A pathetic christmas tree leaned against the wall in the other room, undecorated, dying for want of water. My foot throbbed. The x-rays had been bad news.
"Go ahead. Fucking kill me. Kill me like Brooklyn is going to kill those little kids."
Spit drooled off my dad's chin. He had been spitting with rage. He hated me so much right then, all his hate boiled over. He stepped back and we stared at each other for a few moments. I wanted to fight him but was too weak. I had been on a hunger strike to protest the war. The only person who knew of this hunger strike was my family. It had been two days since I had eaten.
"Every day the United States spends in Iraq I will not eat." I had pronounced during a dreadful Thanksgiving dinner during which my dying grandmother had gotten drunk and dropped a glass of wine on the table cloth. As he carved the Turkey my father had said that if Brooklyn died he would assassinate the president.
"Whatever," I said. "You live in this country. You pay your taxes. If Brooklyn dies then you killed him. You're a coward, just like every other tax payer in America. No one has courage. This is the most disgusting country in the world. I renounce my citizenship. I renounce this family of rapists."
I lay back on the couch, my sweat had long ago discolored the fabric of the seat cushions. My father turned away and got his coat. He normally ate some oatmeal before he left but this time he just slammed open the door and banged down the icy steps to drive to work. I could hear him peeling out on his way down the driveway. I was so unhappy. I was crippled and depressed and had no future and was hungry and in a country that had betrayed me, was killing in my name, was a fraud. Across the street some Christmas lights blinked in the post dawn fog. Red white and blue red white and blue. Patriotic Christmas lights, like the yellow ribbon on the tree out front, a marketing strategy by Kmart.
I struggled to my feet and with the help of my crutches I stumbled to the front door and opened it, knocking down a Christmas wreath hung on the door knob. I looked at the yellow ribbon and the newspaper on the snowy front walkway with the headlines "We will win!" and a smiling, blood thirsty President Bush. I looked across the neighborhood. The first time I spoke my voice broke like dry sand. The second time was loud. The third time was a scream.
"You all ought to be ashamed of yourself!"