Mt. Man

I'm taking a moral inventory. What step is that in the AA book?
I am trying to get my van legal. Fuckers at the chop shop are as smooth as cream when they are trying to get me to drop the van off. Vultures seeing dollar signs where my headlights are.
So I drop it off and blast back on my Vespa Ciao on route one to work another 11 hours. Then go back and it is all ugly attitude and nasty stares from the service writers. What is the deal?

"What's up? Why no sticker," I said after seeing my van with no inspection sticker.
The dude's attitude was terrible. Treated me like dirt. All condescending tone.
"Well, there are no reverse lights and the shift interlock system doesn't work so you can start the engine in all gears."
"Why would I start the engine in anything other than park?"
"You shouldn't."
"I don't."
"Good."
"Well, then..."
"It's illegal."
"Only an idiot would turn the key with the tranny in reverse."
"It's the shift interlock. That's all I can say."
"Are you sure it had one?"
"Yes."
"I'm not. I'm not sure at all."
Get it fixed and we'll give you a sticker."
"You're serious? Because I could start the van in reverse you want to fail it? Do I look like an asshole?"
"Bring it back when it's fixed."
"I'll never fix that. I'm sure they bypassed it for a good reason."
"And no reverse lights."
"There were reverse lights."
"Not today."
"Well, who cares?"

Everyone of the service writers were looking at me like I was dirt. I felt like driving my '69 van into their window and crushing all those fiberglass sports cars they display in place of their pricks. Some asshole with a baby blue Harley outside that couldn't get over a curb if you had an F22 afterburner thruster attached to it's ass.

So I leave with an attitude like I just threw $20 away on some bullshit inspection. And I go to the van and open the door and on the floor of the van are my Spider Man man panties* and...this is the worse, the goddamn YMCA brochure I picked up because I was pricing the gym and the thing is laying there open on the floor with two prepubescent children all grinning and innocent and wet from swimming and I look at the Born in the USA Springsteen ass and Mick Jagger's cock LP cover and the bed and the piss jug and I start to put the pieces together. I thought I hid all that stuff but now I see that it all fell out when they jacked it up. Oh, god. So, now I gotta be extra careful where I park? I'm sure they made one call to the cops. Guilty by suspicion. I feel like my unconventional lifestyle unfortunately shares horrible traits with transient sex offenders. This is not my fault but at the same time I am feeling the effects. These random events all add up to being public enemy number one.

* I purchased comic book adult underoos to prove a point that just because Walmart sells something does not mean it is a culturally relevant item. Everyone wants me to just accept that Walmart is there and blah blah blah but when I go in randomly and see adult underoos in my size then I flashed an idea that I would prove that yes, Walmart exists and I can't do shit, but adult underoos also exist and if you want to defend Walmart as being too big to fail then fuck you and this is what happens when you blindly accept the Walmart marketing plan. You buy adult underoos with Thor and Spider Man on them and become a laughing stock and police target. But they exist! Walmart knows what's best for me! I trust Walmart. Blah blah! Fuck them! This is just an example of my experiment in truth. NEVER TRUST WALMART. IT'S ALL POISON!

Living in The Walmart Parking Lot

My element is the van, on the move, I feel God speaks through me at that point and here I channel some kind of modern song Woody Guthrie might've written. You see, the world is always ending and always being reborn and my goal is to understand what I can about it. I don't want to be an expert at crimping d-sub pins but I do want to be an expert at what encompases my life. Thoreau talked about making an account of one's life. In 1846 that wasn't so hard. What industries does my life rely on? Etc. Well, in 2010 that's a damn hard thing to account for. I'm telling you that something feels wrong with how ignorant we all must be about the small details of our lives.
Ok, so I make the wires that belong in semiconductor wafer slicers. I can check that off. It's intolerable work. Only a man who is chained to child support or a disabled wife would do this job. Only a woman who is diabetic and can not walk fifty yards without hacking or quick smoking a butt would do this job. Maybe that is life with 7 billion people. Maybe we have to hustle and complaining does nothing. I feel that I can't expect someone to do this work, even if it means they have money to buy pot and get stoned and build wafer slicers. I believe this work is dehumanizing and it propagates an inhuman populace. It has to! There comes a point when living requires such complicated, foreign procedures that it's a house of cards. See? We're all relying on a thin slice of a card when there is the whole face of the card we are ignorant about. We put a key in an ignition. It starts. Is that enough?
Our day to day existence of taking the dog to the park or eating or reading suddenly relies on semiconductors and what do semi conductors rely on? Ion injectors? Argon? A gas that is heavier than oxygen so if you breath it your lungs reject oxygen. I'm troubled by these things I can't learn about in a lifetime. I can't account for my life anymore. There was a time not so long ago where a relatively educated person could account for his life. In fact, a poor person could definitely account for his life. In 1845 that person was Thoreau. Walden is his account for his life, what his life relied on at that time. Today, I can not write that book because it will take a lifetime to learn about everything my life relies on. And I don't mean reading about it in a semi conductor manual. I mean working at a semi conductor manufacturing facility. These days I'm further down the value chain so I hardly know anything about semi conductors. But I know that ion injectors and Argon come into play and those things would require more research. It feels impossible, like I'm chasing a rainbow that keeps receeding.
At first I was just singing about a lifestyle that sounds amusing to me. People living in the Walmart Parking Lot. Jesus! Is that possible? Yes, it is. I wanted to pay tribute to those gypsies and make fun of it. But as I listen to the song I realize that when I sing, "We're all living in the Walmart parking lot." I'm not just talking about the people in the vans in the parking lot of Walmart. I'm talking about society as a whole. Like, you all live in houses, but it's reaching the point where those houses are just suburbs of the Walmart parking lot. People living in their vans in the Walmart Parking lot are just closer to the source. You have to drive there; they can just walk out there doors and across the asphalt. So, is that where we are at? Don't answer that question. It's like the convict said to me at the aluminum factory: "Oggy, you only have to look with your eyes."
He was talking about quality control of industrial sized heat sinks but I like to use his words to apply to our culture because after a while your eyes adjust to insanity. You only have to look with your eyes to see what's happening. If you allow the media to distort your vision then you will see Walmart as progress. Our eyes have been poked out. This is a culture of corporate recklessness. I see children who don't stand a chance to develop their own ideas. Their minds are bought and sold from day 1. Propaganda is how to control people and right now I'm seeing a reckless race to the bottom. Media this poisonous can't be by accident. Please find some unconventional independent media to browse. Report your findings to your friends.

Dave

A Woman approached us and looked in Dave's trailer. She was hesitant because together we made a strange hobo team. Then she braved up and said, "Do you have my recycling bin?"
"No," said Dave
"Well, you took it from my yard."
"No, I didn't," said Dave. He was rocking a little faster than he had been a moment before. Dave rocks probably because the motion eases his joint pain. We've all found ourselves rolling our shoulders to make a pain go away. Imagine if that pain never went away. You'd just keep rolling your shoulders.

"You did. I saw it in your trailer," said the woman. "It was in your trailer and it was mine. I told you that you could take the bottles and cans but leave the bin."
She walked back to her utility vehicle. She as trying to be assertive without being too rude to an obviously disadvantaged person.
"It's not a big deal but it cost me fifteen dollars to replace it," she said. "That was kind of shitty."
Then she drove away.
Dave shrugged and said to me, "I use plastic bags. I don't use the green bins.



Dave was born in Vermont. He said he'd go back there if he had the money. He has no family there anymore but the idea of home always moves us onward.
Dave has rheumatoid arthritis. He takes darvocet for the pain and during the interview he had to wash some darvocet down with coffee from a reusable mug. He moved like I've seen people move who have had their spines fused.

Crossroads is full of people like Dave. Not everyone can get a job or navigate the labyrinth of social services. And when that happens they either go to the woods or get directed to Crossroads. I know what awaits me at Crossroads which is why I won't go there. Dave shook his head when I asked him to describe it to me.
"I wouldn't send my dog there," he said.
The staff is unhelpful, demeaning, domineering.
"They treat you like dirt," said Dave. "They don't want to help."

30 people per room. You must have a welfare or social service referral. Alcohol and drug tests are daily and mandatory. Lights on at 5:30 am, you must be out by 8 am. Breakfast is coffee and doughnuts.
"You're lucky if you get a doughnut," said Dave because the food is usually gone.


Dave was ticketed a few weeks ago. I was on my way to work and I saw the police dealing with Dave and I remember thinking that the story there was more important than where I was going. But I continued and promised myself that when I saw that guy next I'd get an interview. Well, the universe provides and he rolled past my van when I was eating an apple.
"Get some good cans?"
"Always."
"How about $2 for an interview? And an orange?"
"Ok."
"And pictures?"
"Yep."
Turns out the ticket was for scavenging. $124. Dave's income is $100/ week in unemployment and $64 a month in food stamps. He collects cans in New Hampshire and pays someone to take them to Amesbury, Mass where there is a deposit exchange. They make $100 a trip and the driver gets $40.
"You don't seem violent, Dave."
"I'm not. But an officer, the bald one, told me he was sick of seeing me around town. He wanted me out. Said he'd kick my ass."
"That seems uncalled for."
"Damn right."



He came from Vermont and worked at Exeter High School in the maintenance department. The first heart attack left him weak but he found ways to be useful at the school. The second heart attack earned him a pink slip. Dave's unable to work but social security denied his benefits.
"That don't make sense," he said.
"No, it doesn't."

Dave might go to Arizona because he has family there. It might be better for his joints also. But he said travel assistance would only get him to Manchester.
So he plans to keep finding cans and plastic bottles and selling them. He doesn't mind living in the woods since Crossroads is so unpleasant. You treat a man like a child and eventually he forgets what it's like to be a man.

He didn't ask me for any money. He even complimented my vespa ciao and gave me advice about the rooming house on Islington and how RV campers are staying at the walmart parking lot. This is useful advice to me since I'm tramping it now. He didn't smell like booze or swear.
"The economy is bad and getting worse," he said.

Axcelis

"Brilliant minds. Bold science. A powerhouse portfolio of tools: ion implantation, rapid thermal processing, curing, cleaning. Axcelis Technologies. We make semiconductor manufacturing more productive every day."

Most of my projects are ordered by Axcelis so one way to look at my job is that I'm manufacturing cutting edge components. The world is powered by semiconductors and that's where these cables are going. Why don't I feel proud? It's because the dirty secret behind this technology is that it's impossible to do cleanly. They're implanting ions! Does that sound safe? Or to put it another way, we're sacrificing today's environment on the premise that one day machines will run so efficiently that people won't do manual labor. What planet are these brilliant minds living on? You think we're gonna lay around like the Jetsons and watch reality tv? No. We'll be the future Pakistani trash pickers who dig through land fills for precious metals we moronically used to power toy Star Trek replica phasers!
Oh, wait, it won't be us. It'll be someone else. So that makes it alright. That's how a brilliant mind works.

Do questionable labor saving gadgets justify widespread pollution?No chance does this recklessness pay off in some high tech utopia. That's as insane as believing my living in the van will inspire people to live more simply. I don't believe my van life will change anything but then I won't give up either. Join the resistance! Defend Humanity!

Mad World

Best quote from tonight's Tears For Fears concert:

"This is awesome. They sound just like Tears for Fears."

I also won this shirt by hitting a miracle 30 ft basketball shot at the family fun center. Only some tattoo punks were watching so I can't confirm it. But Believe me, I wouldn't buy this shirt.
Except for striking out with a few teenage girls it was a fun evening in Hampton! I even found time to build a harness for an ion injector and change the exhaust on my van. You might call this a well rounded day in the life of a gypsy.