Journal Summary
There aren’t too many old entries from 2017. I kept journals previously but these are some of the earliest that I have or that are worthwhile. I was invited by an old friend from Milwaukee to work with him in Colorado Springs. I had to leave Wisconsin for a number of reasons I may explain in part in the future. The journal begins with me arriving at Jon’s house. He was no longer operating his business, and his lifestyle wasn’t conducive to what I wanted to be doing.
I began living out of my car in Denver working at a day labor service and working craigslist gigs jobs. Had another guy from West Allis whose dad invested money from a car wreck into some properties. I was supposed to meet him in Florida to work on those properties. I found a job to deliver a puppy to Naples so I left early thinking I could live out of my car as well there as in Denver. I was able to deliver the puppy and get paid, but the engine became only minimally functional on my car.
My best course of action at that time was to go back to Denver where at least I knew I could work. I stayed a few nights on the street the first week or so. Rented places to sleep from women on craigslist. It was strictly quid pro quo, $15 a night, but I mention the gender based on the stereotypes about craigslist. There were a surprising amount of people doing that in Denver in 2017. I slept in the woman’s living room with like 4 other people on one occasion.
After a few weeks I found an RV parked at a lot for rent. Eventually I bought a car on the exact day I was being kicked out of the RV. It was a dispute over propane but actually was about me sending him a text meant for this woman I was hanging out with. I think he thought that I got her pregnant because I was responding to her telling me that lie, and maybe he wanted me out based on some prospect of starting a family in his trailer. That was never happening but it could have appeared that way to him.
I lived out of my car in Denver working jobs through Craigslist. Eventually I found an ad for an interstate moving driver. I worked as a driver with a foreman. Second trip I was co-foreman with another foreman. Third trip I was on my own as a foreman. I quit after a few months. I was brought back on a 50/50 split with the owner on my jobs. Either a series of coincidence or a vendetta from the owner things began to go south, and become non-lucrative. I left with about $8,000.
I went to Florida intending to develop and promote my material. From 2014 to 2016 I spent a good amount of time on the West Coast and didn’t want to return. It was December 2018 at that time and Florida seemed like a good place to go. I was pulled over with 3 grams of marijuana, 4 10mg gummy THC edibles, a pipe with marijuana residue and I was charged with 2 felonies and 4 misdemeanors. 2019 I returned to Wisconsin to fight my cases. It took most of my money to pay my bond and get my car out of the tow yard. I don’t believe I have any journal entries from this time, but I did chronicle how I used the Florida Rules of Professional Conduct and applied them to the conduct of my attorney, and the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct to the conduct of the judge, to create a favorable outcome, in The Florida Ordeal. I also wrote Understanding Political Function Through Recent Political History 2019 to 2020, The COVID Media Project, and it was during this period I began to discover and learn Assignment, Sequencing, and Comparison. I don’t have any journal entries from 2018 to about 2020. Most of these were compiled at a later date, I believe 2021, but most of it was written 2019 and 2020.
After the few entries selected in 2017, the journal picks back up in San Diego. I wasn’t necessarily overstaying my welcome with Holly and Ava, but sometimes two seemingly contradicting things can be true. It is true that unless my presence had severe consequences to our daughter’s interests, she would never kick me out, but it’s also true she didn’t want me there. It was also true that I felt like the people who I knew thought I was crazy, our lifestyles were no longer adjacent, I don’t have strong family ties, I still had warrants, I didn’t have opportunities to make money, I wasn’t going to go back to hustling, not out of Holly’s place after she worked so hard to build herself up, and my misery feeling trapped in that environment I believed was decreasing Holly and my daughter’s quality of life. My car failed from all the trips to Florida. I was stuck and had to unstick myself.
I had some money I saved working removing lead from an indoor gun range. I won about $600 in a poker tournament online. After buying a plane ticket I had about $800.
In 2015 or 2016 I was transporting marijuana trimmers to and from the SF bay area to Mendocino and Humboldt counties. Ukiah, Garberville, Willits, Fortuna, Eureka, Arcata, among other places. I was working on material some of it survived and most of it does not. My van broke down in Daly City. I applied for benefits and lived out my van parked in a shopping center for about 6 months working on a book. Again, some of it survived and served as the basis for other material, some of it was a learning experience. After discovering how much CA was spending on homelessness I drew up a program that would essentially allow homeless people in the SF bay area to accept a lump sum based on the condition that they do not return unless they repay the sum. I was trying to attach a felony perjury charge if they violated the agreement. There were probably better ways to enforce the agreement, but I was homeless up against the homeless industry. Had a lot of interesting experiences during that time. Eventually I found a job, bought a car, and returned to Milwaukee.
The point of bringing that period up is in SF it was easy to get shelter and benefits. In 2016 they even had a public works program. In 2020, not wanting to return to SF, or LA, I flew to San Diego thinking I could get in a shelter, find a job, buy a car, and go from there. That’s where the journal picks up. I was in San Diego for maybe a week and a half and there was nothing shaking. Bad situation for me.
I found a woman renting a room for the month for a few hundred dollars. I found a flight to Vegas for about $40 and went to Vegas. That situation only lasted for a month. I found another room to rent and that situation lasted a month, but I was able to buy a car. Neither of these situations was I anything other than a good tenant. Quiet, clean, respectful, and did little else while in either of the residence other than occupy space when I was there.
The first woman was living with her man, they were doing things on the perimeter that seemed intent on antagonism that culminated in a heated exchange and her man pulling a gun on me. I still didn’t leave because I paid my rent and didn’t feel like I did anything that warranted eviction. They played on the perimeter, and one morning when it was about 40 degrees outside they left in the morning and left the door open so I’d have to get up to close it. I slammed the door and then we discussed what they’d been doing.
The second woman I rented from didn’t understand I was renting a room and there was no expectations that I’d be a caregiver, activity partner, meal planner, and would supply my attention as she demanded. To get attention she would pretend to others that she was being victimized by whoever it was she was talking to. When I was initially in her good graces she would talk to me about brother Rick, her niece, medical problems, and talk to her mom on the phone about them. Then when I wasn’t doing things she wanted me to do that weren’t part of our agreement she’d talk to others about me. She’d try to provoke arguments and I would ignore her.
I left her house after changing the water pump on the car I had because it was overheating. After changing the pump I still had overheating issues. The second day the issue went away but the car was running very rough. I drove to Flagstaff AZ to rent a room and consider my options. I went to Austin TX where I was interviewed for a documentary that I wasn’t really prepared for. I discovered that my timing chain needed to be replaced. I didn’t have the money or a space to do the job. I found an ad in Craigslist to unload furniture in a new hotel construction and it was a multi week job. This is when I became involved with Mark and Premier Hospitality.
I initially only intended to work there to save enough to fix my timing chain and have some money left over. But it was a good environment and seemed like a good opportunity to save money to position myself to promote my material. I intended to save between 10 and 20k. I had an altercation at a comedy event at a casino in Mashantucket, CT where although in self defense, I thought someone was seriously injured and I didn’t want to be arrested and have to sit for potentially a long time resolving the matter. I left Premier having only saved $5500. A few weeks later I spoke with the tribal police and explained how my actions, which should be on security camera, met the criteria for self defense according to Connecticut state law, and he’d be wasting public resources to pursue charges for acts that clearly, and evidentiary did not violate the law.
It was around this time that I compiled my material into the aforementioned books, and designed tee shirts. I purchased fliers and began distributing fliers in person as well as putting them on cars. I was looking for groups like I participated in when I was in Los Angeles in 2014, and 2015 but couldn’t find anything. When I was in LA in 2014 I interacted with a lot of political discussion groups and some activist groups. This is where I discovered that nothing was about solutions and causes, but in ideology, or the benefits to organizers and the benefit to the rank and file in activities, and other social rewards through proposed causes. I also learned people had no problem lying to themselves and others to stay within the dominant narratives and ideas of the group. Outside of activist groups, but within them as well, you could leave people without any rational argument for their position, and they might be quiet, but still maintain that position. In other situations people may agree but still not be interested in your material or ideas. Comparative to myself today I was intellectually primitive, but stood on sound logic. After spending about 2.5 years trying to promote through argument and word of mouth without money I began working and saving money.
I engaged in some development and promotion. Eventually I ran out of money and was back to surviving, living out of my car. The following year I rejoined Premier. I saved about 12k, and it was during this time that I put together OPL and sought to accomplish legislative goals through the promotion of OPL, to address inadequate opportunities for income and draw attention to my material. To present, is that failing endeavor, sollicitations, and living out of my car trying to survive while wrestling with the knowledge that the species seems incorrigible, intent on preserving their value structure through self deception that makes them impossible to meaningfully communicate with, and leaving them as zombies strung along by their biases, governed by feelings they don’t understand built on beliefs consisting of lies and contradiction Waking up on a daily basis knowing that there is essentially nothing I can do to improve my circumstances. Periodically questioning how long I want to do this, with the knowledge that there’s nothing else for me. I can’t do what I want to do, and from my perspective there’s nothing else worth doing.
That is the summary of what’s probably about 800 pages of journal entries spanning a decade.
6/2017 Colorado Springs
I texted Jon who invited me to come out a few weeks earlier and provided him with my ETA. He told me he was in Denver getting autographs from some member of Pink Floyd, and would be back about 7pm. He told me “you can come by whenever you get here, chill with my goat in the hot tub til I return, It’s always hot, on my back porch.”
I expected the hot tub but only half expected the goat. Normally, I wouldn’t expect the goat at all but Jon was the kind of person who would take half his yard and create an enclosure just to have something unusual. When I arrived, I went to the back and there was both a goat and a hot tub. I also found two people in his shed which he was renting out to a guy named Marshall.
I didn’t want to be imposing on the people in the back who looked like they were working on something so I waited in my car and reviewed some of my material.
Jon pulled up with two females who stayed briefly and then we went to the liquor store. I contributed to the purchase of a bottle of Crown Royal and we had a few drinks reminiscing and catching up. He told me he appreciated me coming down, and he was dealing with a situation that was destroying his life.
A woman who he had a casual relationship with started bagging up his belongings with the intention of robbing him. He caught her doing it and kicked her out of the house. Someone shortly thereafter drove the woman into a remote area in the mountains and dropped her off. She told the police Jon forced her into his car first at gunpoint, and then the story changed and it was at knife point.
He told me he was out on $100,000 bond, and had a $25,000 lawyer. In addition to the charges, the woman’s sugar daddy was harassing him, telling his neighbors and businesses he contracted with that he was a murderer and other accusations, the likes of which I cannot recall. I didn’t personally witness any of this but this is what he told me. I mention that I didn’t personally witness this because I cannot be sure what, if anything, was true when I was there.
Jon was a go getter, a bullshitter, but he worked hard to grow his business and be successful.
In his early 20s he cleaned carpets. He rented the machine and worked the contracts of another company. Eventually he bought his own equipment and started his own business. I did one job with him when I was in my early 20s, and I remember it well because I almost went to jail.
He or at this time may still have been through a company he contracted with, would advertise these rooms cleaned for this price, or vent cleaning was another popular service for a low price. When Jon gets there, he walks through the basement and immediately begins upselling the service. I don’t remember everything, but one of the sales that was amazing to me is he would sell furnace filters, the kind you buy at Home Depot for 15 to $20, for 100 to $200.
The customer is younger in his 20s, and when Jon tells him everything he needs and the price he has to call his father in law, since his father in law is the one who is paying for it. The man’s father in law came over to the house
As soon as he pulls up, he starts yelling “I know what this is, this is the bait and switch”, and him and Jon began arguing. Jon tells him “that’s fine, I’ll leave, I just need to write you the invoice because its $50 for me to come out here.” The guy says he’s going to call the police. Jon gives him the invoice and he rips it up, balls it up, and throws it in the van.
At the time I was escaped from the Community Correctional Center, which makes me sound like I was more of a fugitive than I really was, but if the police showed up, I was going to jail for the 9 months remaining on my sentence and the escape charge which was a felony up to 5 years. I didn’t tunnel through my wall and belly crawl through 1000 yards of sewage like Andy Dufrain, I had work release for about half the time I was sentenced to and didn’t come back.
I sat about 13 months in the Milwaukee County House of Corrections before my work release time began. I only worked about half the time I was scheduled to work, the other half of the time I would go to the studio to work on music and drink with friends. One night at about 3am I was woken up by the third shift correctional officer. She had my schedule and my paystub and asked why my pay stub only had 24 hours on it but I was supposed to be working 48 hours? I told her I was training people this week and wasn’t logged into the system during that time. I told her I would have my work fax over the details tomorrow. Tomorrow came and I did not come back.
I’m telling Jon, let’s go, I got warrants and he is still arguing with the guy. We did manage to leave before the police arrived but since it’s rare that I see Jon, there is usually something that comes up that brings back the story of the Bait and Switch. It was funny in hindsight because the guy just kept passionately yelling this is the bait and switch. It was.
Jon was successful, settled down with an acquaintance of mines daughters mother, had a son, and after vacationing in Colorado Springs moved to Colorado Springs with his family. His woman left him, and while Jon maintained his business, he also expanded his circle, adding some people of questionable character like the woman who was destroying his life.
The Jon I found in Colorado Springs was not the Jon I had known. He wasn’t working, was hardly invested in his case that held his future in the balance. For the first week he was concerned with little more than alcohol, drugs, and entertaining the addicts he kept around.
7/2017 to 8/2017
Detroit
For the week to week and a half I was at Jons I was scheduling work on Craigslist, sometimes in Colorado Springs but more often in Denver. On my birthday I found two jobs. The 1st was to load two storages into a semi-trailer and stack it using less than 1900 cubic feet (used about 1750 with the other worker, a Russian, being an important contributor to that success). I finished the job which took about 6 hours, and I was about 20 miles towards Colorado Springs, stopping at a Jimmy Johns to eat. I received a call from an ad I responded to a few days prior asking if I was available for work? I appreciated the opportunity and drove back to Denver for this job.
There was still disassembly taking place, it was a long-distance office move, and I was told by others who were working there that in the previous days they loaded two full trailers. We worked about 12 hours, from I think 5pm to 5am the first night loading the entire semi-trailer. It took us longer because of the distance from where the items were being moved to the trailer.
We had a break for a day and met the following day to resume the move. Aniea rented a 26ft Uhaul truck that his friend David was going to drive back to Detroit. Unfortunately, he underestimated the amount of space the remaining furniture would require and had to rent another 26ft truck. The issue that night was Aniea was unable to rent another truck , but the office had to be empty by 7:30am the following day. To remedy this issue, he decided to stack the furniture in the hotel parking lot where they were staying.
I was asked if I could drive the other Uhaul to Detroit, and I said I would but require a tow dolly to bring my car. Gneesh was some level of executive for the company that was moving and he told me if I was interested he had work for me in Detroit. It seemed like an opportunity could be coming together.
I drove to Detroit and made good time, stopping only once for a few hours rest. I was very careful not to put myself in a position where I needed to back up, because for all my driving skills, I am not proficient or even somewhat capable of backing up a trailer.
When I arrived in Detroit, Aniea and Sarah rented a hotel room for me. The next two days were spent unloading the Uhauls. I was scheduled to look at a house to stay at but I didn’t know if the work was going to pan out. Gneesh had me fill out an online application but a background check was included in the process, and I had open cases, albeit misdemeanors, but still warrants.
I expressed this concern to Aniea. He told me not to worry, because working through Gneesh meant working for him, and if there was a problem with the background check it meant Aniea would pay me and charge Gneech instead of me working with Aniea and being paid by Gneesh.
The problem was, after the second day of unloading the trailer, other people who helped him were invited to a job that day, whereas I was told he would call me.
I spent one more night in a hotel, I may have responded to a few ads for work, and then I left. I didn’t know where I was going but if there was no work, there was no way I was able to stay, even though I wanted to.
Yusef Minneapolis
I called Yusef and asked if I could stop by on my way back to Denver. He seemed excited to have company from back home. After leaving Detroit I rented a hotel in Fort Wayne Indiana, before contacting Yusef and heading to Minneapolis.
I didn’t completely know what to expect because this was the first time I was seeing Yusef as a Muslim, although we spoke on the phone.
I gave Yusef $60 to stay for the week which he said was clutch, and saved him a day of day laboring to have money after paying his rent. We went to a few bars, the last one was called Hot Rods in St. Paul. If you have $5 to $10 in St. Paul, you can go to the bar and get drunk. Second bar we went to I ordered a rum and coke with a lime. It was probably 3/4ths rum and 1/4th coke. Stiff drink. Since there was almost no one there we went to a bar down the street called Hot Rods, which had a neon hot rod car sign outside of it. It looked like it was going to be a country bar but when we entered it had a fairly urban atmosphere. It was late and we didn’t stay long. The female to male ratio wasn’t great, usually isn’t, I ordered a rum and coke but I don’t think they had limes. I took a sip of the drink and it was rough. There may have been a touch of coke that did nothing but accentuate the bitter flavor of well rum.
It was very hot in Yusef’s apartment. It was located on the second floor with no air conditioning. He only had one fan which he insisted I use.
The second or third day I was there there was a moving gig I booked on craigslist, unloading a trailer, totaling about 2000cf. It was myself and a young Sudanese man. In consideration of the Somali community in the area where Yusef frequented, and his African accent, I asked him if he was Somali. He wasn’t offended, but he did make fun of my ignorance, basically itemizing the distinctions between Somali features and Sudanese features. Even the truck driver, Donald may have been his name, a short Asian Ronnie Coleman built truck driver named distinguishing features between Somalis and Sudanese.
It may have been the most difficult unload I’ve ever done, due to the weather and it being only the two of us.
–
Borderline most difficult, but that honor was reserved for Mr. Cool’s move. It was Mike, Wesley, myself, and a new guy named Cody. This was a move working for Eagle Moving and Storage based in San Francisco, but the move was from somewhere in the East Bay to Dublin. We called him Mr. Cool because of his sunglasses and his demeanor, which wasn’t really cool but seemed like he was making an effort to come off as such.
We had to take the small truck because there were low trees in the neighborhood, and Joey (owner) felt we may have been able to back into the driveway with the small truck. There was a long driveway with a very steep slope, probably 25 to 35 yards from the door to the street. The slope was so steep we were unable to pull the truck in. Nearly everything that needed to be moved was on the second floor, so we had stairs. The greatest difficulty was the weight, shape, and disassembly required for the items that needed to be moved.
He had what we began calling at Eagle Moving Storage Mr. Cool couches. These were three seat mechanical couches with very heavy motors on each side. The guy had 2 or 3 of these couches. There were other pieces that were heavy as well. Mr. Cool’s wife’s mother was packing extra-large wardrobe boxes. This woman possessed the ability to fit items in every square inch of the box. I may have carried one down the stairs, perhaps we moved two, but after that, I retrieved some boxes from the truck and we unpacked the boxes to make the weight manageable.
At the property they were moving to Cody didn’t pick up this powder blue painted dresser and left a blue streak on the floor. Normally not a huge deal, and in the disclaimer it reads we are not responsible for damage to walls or floors. On another move, when we scratched a hard wood floor, I told that to Joey, he wasn’t too happy with that answer, he said something like “so does that mean you don’t give a fuck and scratch their floors”? It was funny, obviously we didn’t try to but when you’re moving 60+ hours a week for weeks on end things happen. The problem was that Mike and Cody already scratched the shit out of the wall and floor at the last property, and Mr. Cool, was not cool with it. Thankfully, Cody removed the streak with a cleaning solution and a rag, while I assisted using the bottom of my shoe.
I don’t remember the overall duration, but it may have been a 14 to 16 hour job, and was exhausting, due to the length, the stairs, the objects, the slope of the driveway, and having to make multiple trips because of the small truck.
Then again there was another move we did up 8 flights of stairs on the fourth floor. We moved them in from Portland to San Francisco, but after moving them in, they moved from the 4th floor apartment to Marin, apparently because the wife of the customer had knee problems. Who would have known that a fourth-floor apartment in a building with no elevator, up 8 flights of stairs would be hard on her knee?
The house they moved to in Marin was probably as difficult as Mr. Cools driveway. There was a narrow path about 25 yards long, followed by a fenced in area very tight to the house in some areas, and then another 10-yard walk to the entrance. A compounding issue was we could not park at the end of the walkway, instead we had to park near the bottom of a hill about 30 yards from the walkway.
On the crew I had Junior who was a strong young Samoan who I discovered had no papers when he wouldn’t return to the truck when I was being written a ticket for blocking the street while we were in a gas station. I enjoyed working with Junior, we’d clown, go back and forth with sarcasm, and sometimes compete in trivial games. Eugene recently immigrated from Ukraine after the oligarchic revolution reduced his monthly income to less than a third of what it was prior to the US supported regime change. And finally, there was Ivan, who was a funny Mexican dude, always said “not a problem”, worked hard, blew weed, and made some cool motivating noises. Junior used to joke about Ivan, imitating how he would try to coach Junior on wrapping or carrying something how he already intended to or was doing it. I think he was mostly bothered by the fact that he knew more and had more experience than Ivan but Ivan would try to coach him on certain things.
The other crew, Mike, Wesley, and Cody worked as well as the others for the most part. Wesley was old but still capable. I usually tried to steer him towards tasks that were less physically demanding. Almost had to fuck him up one day when he pulled a knife on me, but he was the forth person in San Francisco to pull a knife on me. First time I was interrupted by police, the second time I beat the shit out of dude inside the San Francisco Main Library, and the third time I was stabbed and slashed, but still got the last hit in. Wesley was cool though.
Mr. Cool was Cody’s first day. Joey asked me how he did and I told him I didn’t want to work with him. He seemed lazy and not into it. There were times he would stop and either Mike or myself would have to direct him. I didn’t consider it at the time with it being his first day how demanding this job was. Joey told me not to be too hard on him with it being his first day, and in the weeks that followed Cody developed into a good worker.
Mike was cool, usually brought weed to smoke, but did things that pissed me off, trying to lean too much into my job and responsibilities, which today I may not have minded so much whereas a little over a year ago it aggravated me.
I didn’t smoke weed very often when I was in San Francisco. I’d smoke in the morning, miss all kinds of turns, and otherwise, not be very sharp. Mike used to quote Kat Williams when I’d have a high moment, “regular weed nigga”.
I went by his spot before we did an LA trip, did my laundry and watched TV. I felt off about him because there was no way for me to know, if he knew, what he was doing at times was pissing me off before I told him. When I would talk to him about something afterwards I would question myself, like I was wrong for bringing it up to him because he didn’t intend it how I was perceiving it?
There was also people in the company called “The Indian Mafia”. Those who I worked with worked well, the three I remember were Daniel, Sai, and Redi. Redi was a foreman on a job I went out on him with, I think it was him, Jose and myself. Jose was a cunt, did things to intentionally aggravate me, was fired or quit about half way through my employment at Eagle. Redi went through the toll booth on I think the Dumbarton Bridge clipped the side and busted up the mirror. He was able to repair it so it was at least functional though.
Lastly, there was Domingo, from Nicaragua. He was with the company for 5 years when I arrived, joked around, and gave me a ride to pick up my car.
–
I went to a gas station after I finished unloading the truck. My shirt was saturated with sweat. I peeled the shirt off my body and retrieved a fresh shirt from my trunk. After getting gas and beverages I went to Wendy’s and the air conditioning revived me.
A short time later I received a call or text from Yusef who was picking his son up from daycare I think within the hour. I told him I would meet him down there and pick him and his son up, as there was no sense in them taking the bus in the heat. I picked up Yusef and then we picked up his son from the daycare.
We pull off, traffic is heavy, stop and go. We are waiting for a nearby light and I see this woman with a stroller in stretch pants, and she bends over, little or no knees in it, and although she’s sloppy, she has a vertical line going on from behind, both cheeks well defined from inside their spandex wrap. I look in front of me and traffic begins moving so I begin accelerating, but I wanted to see if she was still in that position, if I could get another look, and in that second bite of eye candy, I hear Yusef say “O STOPP!!!”. I turned to see I was going to hit the truck in front of me, slammed on the brakes, and rear ended the truck.
I thought my radiator burst open, smoke poured from the front of the car while coolant ran down to the curb of the street. Yusef said “Sheee-it!”
A woman told me from her car window the truck looks alright but your car is fucked up. I smiled about it, appreciative of the diagnosis of the other driver’s car, and already knowing that I have some issues based on the smoke, coolant, and new damage to my hood.
We get out of the car. I said my fault, and exchanged insurance information with the driver I hit. He didn’t want to call the police.
We pulled around the corner and I assessed the damage to my vehicle. The front was pushed in, there was a leak in the radiator, and the cooling fan was out of place, along with damage to the grill and more damage to the hood. We went to Walmart so I could purchase some tools and materials. I used a zip tie to position the fan in where it would be clear from hitting other engine components. I was unable to locate the source of the radiator leak
I was very concerned about my car. I took Yusef and his son home, played with his son for a little while, pushing him back and grabbing his belly, and he would start laughing. He threw his head back and hit the wall, so we rubbed his head and he was good pretty quick.
The next morning I went to Mc Donalds near the Walmart. I reassessed the damage in the parking lot and I noticed my frame was bent and cracked, but worse than this, I could not find the source of the leak. My theory is the fan damaged a hose, and there was damage to a hose from the fan, and maybe this caused the initial plume of vapor and loss of coolant but when the fan was removed from the hose although it was visibly damaged, when it resumed its natural position, it no longer leaked. Otherwise I don’t know how to explain what happened next. I needed a place to work on my car, and I wanted to return to Denver because I was confident I could find work in Denver. I texted Jon who told me his mother was visiting him from Milwaukee. I told him about the accident and asked if I could come by to use his tools and driveway to work on my car, and he was welcoming.
The idea was, if the car didn’t overheat, I would stop every 100 or so miles and fill the reservoir with water. The problem was, each time I stopped the reservoir was full. I wasn’t leaking any coolant. The problem I had with this is yesterday I lost half my coolant on the ground and into the air after being in an accident. Now I wasn’t losing anything and I hadn’t located or repaired the leak.
I went west from Minneapolis, and this route led me through some remote areas of South Dakota, so remote, the birds didn’t bother to avoid cars. Two rather large birds flew out from the high grass on the side of the road and I hit the second of the two which sailed like a field goal about 10 yards high and probably 20 yards far, wide left of the road.
Back to CO Springs
I got to Jon’s and talked briefly with his mom before going to the liquor store and getting a bottle of Crown Royal as Jon wanted a drink and I didn’t mind having one with him. I took my hood and attempted to hammer it straight. This did not achieve the desired result. Instead of flattening the creases, it was separating the layers of the hood.
I received a call from a woman in Pueblo who needed a ride to the Colorado Springs airport. I rushed to put the hood back on the car and get to Pueblo.
She was an educated woman, seemed to understand many points, principles, positions, and even the implications of a center for economic planning. On the way to picking her up the hood began to separate as I drove on I25.
After I picked her up, it was so bad I could barely see over the hood as the top was separating from the bottom. I was looking for an opportunity to pull off and fix it but thought it was funny that she continued so long in conversation with me while it seemed like the hood could separate at any moment. It was also a serious obstruction to most of the windshield. Finally, she said something like “are you worried about that”? I said, “I’m not worried about it, but the people behind me should be”. I pulled off and used a pliers to bend the hood at the corners to keep the layers together, and there were no more issues after that stop.
Bear in mind I posted the ad before I left Colorado Springs and when the woman called me I told her my car was just in an accident but I did just drive 1000 miles on it so I could get her to the airport. She didn’t know I was coming from Colorado Springs so she offered me $50 in place of what I probably quoted her as a 35 or $40 fare. When I dropped her off she gave me the 50 plus either a 15 to 20 or $25 tip.
I worked a few craigslist gigs, but then Jon expressed to me that he needed my help. He bought a canned ham trailer he had been restoring throughout the last month. Jon told me he was being kicked out of his house due to a change in ownership, and his plan was to move his trailer to this remote location on someone’s property who Tia knew. He wanted me to help sell his items he didn’t want to move, load up his car and bring the contents to his storage, as well as work and help him prepare for work.
He made promises about the money we would make through his carpet cleaning business, and I was convinced by the credibility of the prospect to neglect work and help him. In addition to helping him sell his items, which he paid me a commission on most of them, I also posted an ad and scheduled a cash job to clean a carpet. Scheduling this job would lead to my departure from Colorado Springs.
Jon was on some weird shit, in a spiral that he seemed to want me to ride down with him. He negotiated a place for me to stay at the property where he was going to be staying in his camper. My money was running very low, I wasn’t booking CL jobs, I was trying to help Jon get his affairs in order, but he didn’t want to put in much effort. Each night of the last few nights he talked about these jobs we needed to get done, and each night, he’d want to party and not get the jobs done. I don’t know if there were jobs.
One night we went to some obscure place in his van where he said he had a contract but his key for the business didn’t work or he forgot the key so we went to a bar.
His power was shut off for the last few days I was there.
In Milwaukee, when people around where we lived on 21st and Grant would have their power cut off it was done at the box. This woman Melena needed Holly’s help to turn her power back on and Holly taught me how to do it. Holly and I would turn the power back on for our neighbors when their bills would become too high.
The process was simple. You pried the side of the box with a screw driver until it bent enough to remove the round glass meter piece in the middle, which is like a large plug with prongs. The procedure only required enough space to remove the prongs from the plug to pull off the plastic sleeves. The power company placed two plastic sleeves over the prongs and these sleeves are the only thing preventing power from coming to your house from the grid. On the side of the box you pried you can use a needle nose pliers, or I usually used a scissors, remove the plastic sleeves, and plug the center piece back in. You can bend the box back, usually getting it to a place where it appears as if it has not been tampered with.
A month later, the power company may send someone back out to turn the power off at the box, and you simply repeat the process. You could do this for months before they finally cut you off at the pole. I couldn’t help you if they cut the power off at the pole.
In Colorado Springs the boxes are different, and according to Jon they shut the power off remotely. So the last few days there was no power while I worked to get the rest of things to his storage.
My last day we were supposed to do the job I scheduled at 11am. I posted an ad on CL for carpet cleaning after Jon explained the rates to me, fielded some calls and closed this sale. I think Jon estimated based off of what I described that it would be in the neighborhood of about 3 hours of work and we stood to make about $100 each. He wasn’t ready when it was time to do the job at 11am so I called the customer and rescheduled for 1pm. Jon didn’t answer his phone and was MIA until about 3 to 4pm. I don’t know where he went, but he probably went to someone’s house and was sleeping, or he went somewhere in his van, pulled off, and went to sleep. Either way, for me, it was further confirmation he was on bullshit.
I waited for him to come back and told him I was out and left.
8/2017 Work In Florida
A friend told me about the third week of August he was going to Florida to rehab a house his dad bought with money from an injury settlement, and said his dad would pay me to help him. I placed an ad on craigslist in the rideshare section offering a ride to Florida and points along the way. An opportunity to cover my travel expenses and have some company for the ride.
A woman contacted me who needed a Rottweiler puppy picked up in Colorado and delivered to Naples. I didn’t intend to leave until the third week but she offered me $250 if I would leave on the 10th. I figured I could find work in Florida until Steve arrived as well as find work in Denver. Otherwise, I was going to stay in Denver for a few weeks and accumulate as much money as I could before I left to meet him. I was living in my car anyway, so I decided to leave early and take the puppy.
I had a tire blow out in Arkansas. I put the spare on, but this spare I already drove on for probably about 100 miles when I left Colorado Springs. I wasn’t very confident about driving on it for any great distance. It was late, there were no tire shops open, and after we rested at a rest stop, I drove to Memphis to find a replacement.
The first shop I arrived at was around 730am. It looked expensive and I was making this trip on a tight budget. I had maybe $450, needed about $225 for gas, and the puppy caused me to incur a few unexpected expenses.
` I googled another used tire location and when I arrived it advertised all used tires for $20. Perfect. I pulled into the parking lot on the side of it which was the parking lot of another store. The owner came out and asked if I was waiting for something? I told him I was waiting for the tire shop to open so I could buy a tire. It was Saturday, and he told me he didn’t think it opened on Saturdays.
I left for another location, and to my satisfaction, I found this small garage, with a driveway that was a mixture of grass, mud, and broken pieces of concrete. A car was being serviced while a man was sitting outside on a chair drinking his Saturday morning beer. After the other car was finished I was told he could give me a tire for $25 plus $2 to take the old one. Later I would discover the tire “Nephew” gave me was slightly smaller than the tire I specified. I think I needed 60 and he gave me 55 but it was functional nonetheless.
Near Atlanta, on I75 is when serious problems began. On the long sloping interstate, my transmission stopped shifting properly. To compensate, I had to rev the engine and take my foot off the gas for it to shift, but soon, the engine itself became the problem as the engine wouldn’t allow the car to rev over 2500 RPMs. The engine would rev higher than 2500, but there was no more power after that point. I was about 650 miles away. My car typically had a range of about 400 to 500 miles per tank, but was now consuming 2 to 3 times as much gas.
There was a very real possibility I wasn’t going to make it, and this had other consequences. If I didn’t make it, I wasn’t going to receive $250 for bringing the puppy, meaning not only was I broke, but I was going to be broke. My broke isn’t the same as other people’s broke, because I don’t have anyone with resources I can turn to.
I intended to drive through the night and deliver the puppy at about 2 to 3am but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I stopped at a rest area.
The next morning I awoke, the distance from Naples I don’t remember, but it must have been at least 100, but not more than 200 miles. I looked for my phone and I couldn’t find it. I slept with both windows open and thought someone reached in the car and stole it while I was sleeping. I was intensely frustrated and slammed my hand down on the arm rest. The address to the purchaser was on a text message, the number to the purchaser was on the phone, the number to the broker of the delivery was on the phone.
Without the phone I was where I was, with a puppy that wasn’t mine, and about $25 on me. Later I would discover I had about another $20 on a debit card from a labor hall, but even had I known that, I was in a terrible situation, in August Florida heat, which is as intense as any heat I have ever felt.
I looked at the address the night before and thought I remembered the address. I regained my composure and returned to the interstate. I was looking for a Mc Donald’s, I still had my laptop, and was going to use wifi to get the directions to drop off the puppy that would relieve probably 90% of my stress. I see a Mc Donald’s sign and I take the exit.
A funny thing happens as I exit the interstate. I hear directions from the google maps navigation on my phone. When I hear the voice I respond to it but I’m so caught up in calculating my next moves, I fail to realize: if I am hearing that, it means my phone is in the car!
By the time I reached Mc Donald’s I was elated to discover my phone was in the car, but I was also in disbelief due to the extent to which I searched the vehicle. I soon found it wedged between the center console and the passenger seat, not quite breaking the plane of the bottom of the seat, but also not visible from the top.
I called the broker first but there was no answer. I figured she may still be sleeping because I did not contact her before I went to sleep, and she was waiting up for the confirmation of the delivery as I was expected to complete the delivery that night. Next, I estimated the time it would take me to get to Naples and I contacted the customer. She would be ready around the anticipated time of arrival.
I may have had 10 dollars and about 50 miles until empty when I reached Naples. Fortunately, as expected due to revelations from Teresa that the customer asked how much she should tip, and I received a 60-dollar tip.
I stopped at Mc Donald’s, ate, and began to consider my options. I reduced the options to Miami and Tampa, being that both cities had labor halls, but needing to stop at Wal-Mart took me to Fort Myers, which is a place I visited as a teen.
My exhaust was scraping the ground, an issue that began after I went to court in Adams County, WI earlier in the year
Before the tire blew out I had to stop and fix the exhaust because it was scraping when I would go over bumps. The front was still attached but towards the middle and the rear, it was sagging. I used the strap from my luggage bag to go around the pipe then connected the strap on both ends to different pieces of the underside of the car. In the back I used a pair of shoe laces to tie the portion near the muffler higher. By the time I made the delivery the exhaust once again was scraping.
I stopped at WalMart in Fort Myers. I was getting worried because by now it was about 11am and I still didn’t hear back from the broker. They used UShip, so when I made the delivery the customer gave me the verification code. The broker uses the verification code to be paid for the delivery and then she pays me. I sent the verification code via text somewhere around 9am. I called, texted, but received no response and was beginning to think she played me. If she didn’t pay me there was almost nothing I could do. I didn’t know where she lived, where she worked, or even what her full name was.
I did get some information from the client and sent a half threatening text about theft of services, and contacting UShip. Something she was understanding of later in consideration of the circumstances.
I sat in the Walmart parking lot for a little while before I decided I was going to Tampa, chiefly because it was further north than Miami, and should I need to leave Florida, I am closer to doing so from Tampa.
Tampa had a few day labor agencies as well, which had I chosen to stay, would have been important to trying to establish myself in the early goings. I chose not to use the Walmart in Fort Myers as using the Walmart in Tampa would provide me with a destination as well as something to do while I figured things out. Either before I left Fort Myers or some time afterwards, I received a call from Teresa who quickly processed my payment which was one less thing to worry about. But transferring the money from my paypal account to a debit card can take a few business days.
I had a cooler so purchased a bag of ice, water, soda, and metal sign holders. Florida in August is one of the hottest places on the planet. The humidity, intensity of the sun, and lack of a breeze created a thick invisible blanket of heat that sticks to you. If you do not have an air-conditioned house and an air-conditioned car, you have no business being in Florida in the summer..
I jacked the car up in the parking lot to gain some clearance. Once under the car I bent one of the sign holders around the exhaust pipe and a point on the car. I used a long screwdriver and wrapped the sign holder around it, then gripped the screw driver using it for leverage to twist the sign holder to better secure the exhaust. I reached a point where I felt like it was going to break but thought I could get another few twists out of it. It broke.
By now the broker who lived near Tampa called and told me I could sleep on her couch. I decided I would repair the exhaust the next day. Tired from stress and heat, I headed to her home somewhere around 830pm. When I arrived I took a shower, laid down on the couch, and fell asleep.
The idea was to wake up, fix the exhaust and go to the day labor place. Instead when I woke up from my alarm, I decided I was going to take a day and went back to sleep until 630 to 7am where I met the broker Teresa’s wife or girlfriend, although I cannot remember her name. I got in my car and left. Later Teresa called and asked why I didn’t wait for breakfast, but I appreciated the fact that she offered me a place to stay for the night and didn’t want to impose on her or her wife.
The next few days passed slowly. I didn’t want to make any sudden moves but I did intend to move. I called Steve in Milwaukee to ask him when he planned on coming down here to start the work. To my dismay he informed me he fell down a hill and injured himself which meant he was going to be delayed for a few weeks.
This was when I decided to return to Denver, a decision that was aided by the climate. Even during the night it was hot, the temperature would drop 5 to 10 degrees max. I opened my car doors, rolled down my windows, and laid completely still trying to fall asleep. It seemed like no sooner would I fall asleep that I’d wake up covered in sweat. Of course, for the most part I laid there with my eyes closed sweating, unable to fall asleep.
I had very little cash, but I did have a few items I purchased from Walmart that I was able to return, maybe $15 worth of items. I needed to transfer the $250 from my Paypal account to my debit card but I was worried I would miss an opportunity to leave while my money was in the process of transferring. Obviously, I also needed to junk my car, but needed to work out transportation before I did because I did not want to be without shelter while awaiting departure.
I went to a Mc Donald’s to eat and use the wifi. Delta was the only airline that took Paypal, but if I flew, I didn’t have enough for the airline ticket and luggage. It would be whatever I could fit in my backpack.
Greyhound did not accept Paypal, and the craigslist ride shares were too expensive, some asking $200 to get to Denver. On a few occasions I entertained the idea of driving my car back to Denver, feeling the car may make it, but I was dissuaded by the fact that gas consumption had increased to the point where it may have taken 4 to $500 in gas to make the trip, even if by some miracle the engine or the transmission didn’t go completely before reaching Denver.
The next day I concentrated on finding a good price to junk my car. Magic’s Used Auto Parts in Clearwater offered me the best price. He told me $200 which was more or equal to the other junkyards I called, but I negotiated for a better price based on the fact that the car wouldn’t have to be towed and it still drove. He told me $250 if I drove it in and $300 if the car runs and drives. The offer was in line with my expectations.
I went to the location but the owner who quoted me was not there and he is the one who finalizes company purchases. It was near the end of regular business hours so I drove to a nearby Walmart to wait for the morning.
The next morning, I went to Magic’s. The owner was not there. I explained to the counter workers my situation and they did not have a problem with me waiting in the office until he arrived.
I called rideshares from Craigslist to determine availability and pricing. I found a ride from Clearwater to the downtown Tampa Greyhound Station for $30, which was more than I wanted to pay but not unreasonable.
I was there for at least a few hours. At one point, I looked out the door and there was a peacock walking around the front entrance, but I was the only one who was interested in it. Apparently, peacocks roam freely in Clearwater, because everyone else in the store was looking at me like “dude act like he never seen a peacock at a junkyard”, while I’m looking like there’s no peacocks outside of the zoo, there’s a peacock out there!
Finally, the owner arrives. He tells me to pull my car up so he can look at it. I pull the car up and pop the hood. He looks at it and tells me the engine is no good, something I suspected but didn’t want to completely believe. He told me $200, and I reminded him about what he told me on the phone. He said he knew what he said but the car isn’t worth it if the engine is no good. I thought I would look elsewhere for a better price.
I drove out of the junkyard, about 100 yards to reach the exit from the office. Shortly after I pulled out he pulled out. I reconsidered remembering the calls I made already where no one else offered more than $200 and many others less than $200. I approached the window, briefly explained my situation, telling him I needed $225 for the greyhound. He agreed to $225 and told me he would tell Mike, one of the workers, to take care of it. I already reduced the number of items I would take with me to a backpack and an overstuffed Jack Georges bag, missing the shoulder strap which was used as a temporary fastener for my exhaust.
I was still somewhat worried because I didn’t switch the title over when I purchased the car in California. Fortunately, we could complete the transaction because I had supporting documents for evidence of ownership, insurance cards, tickets, maintenance receipts, etc.
My driver to the Greyhound was a little off. I was quiet most of the ride, as he didn’t seem like someone I could converse with. I listened to him concerning the history of a bridge, a man who funded it, and although I was somewhat interested, it was low priority information to me, therefore, I forgot most of the story.
I do remember one thing he said, probably because it demonstrated the limited perspective of the individual who seemed to have the desire to be civically engaged. He talked about an extra lane being added on the free-way, how it would take I think 5 years to complete. He commented that he wanted it to be in a shorter amount of time, and that the leadership he was looking for from the government was someone who could complete the project in a shorter time. The quote may have been “I want someone who can complete the project in (blank) years, that’s what I call leadership”.
I cannot characterize this person as normal or being representative of anyone else’s opinion other than his own, but I do think the sentiment, in terms of awareness of other people’s problems, is shared by many people in the comfort class. The most important issue to him is an extra lane on the freeway, and leadership would come from presumably a mayor who would likely have to cut other spending to secure funds to complete the project ahead of schedule.
I don’t think it would be that difficult, if procuring building materials is not an issue, as in custom parts to create the extra lane on the bridge; then the time table is almost solely a matter of equipment availability and manpower. If the city were to accept one bid from one company who planned to use 100 men, hiring 5 companies working together and using 100 men would complete the project nearly 5x faster. But, beyond the feasibility of such a request, the idea that the only thing wrong in the city or county, was traffic, was extremely off putting to me.
I only spent a few days in the Tampa area, mostly across the bridge which isn’t actually Tampa, but even in that short amount of time I noticed the economic inequality, the well off and the not so well off, homelessness, and no shortage of evidence of struggle. Priority should be creating opportunities for disadvantaged people, which will trickle up to the well to do as these people have more money to purchase products, services, and pay outstanding bills.
I arrived at the Greyhound Station, and there were people standing outside, some asking for money or cigarettes which is typical of nearly any Greyhound Station, while others were waiting for a ride. In fact one such person negotiated a ride with my driver, a $10 dollar fare.
I entered the station and approached the counter to inquire about the cost to different destinations because I did not have enough cash on me for a ticket to Denver. The ticket was 225, but with tax I think it was about 240. Less if you purchased online. I needed more time to consider my options. I transferred the money from my Paypal to my debit card either that day or the night before, but the funds hadn’t been transferred. Any partial distance ticket would cost me about $100 more than if I were to wait to purchase the ticket to Denver. With that in mind I decided I would wait until my money transferred and purchase a ticket directly to Denver.
At around 10 o’clock, it may have been 11, it may have been 9, definitely wasn’t 7 or 8, everyone in the terminal who did not have a ticket had to vacate until the morning. Since I hadn’t purchased a ticket I was one of the two who would have to spend the night outside. The other was a young man who’s name I forgot but who I remember as Arkansas, because he was from Arkansas.
We chopped it up a little bit and talked about the security guard. As he was making us leave, and then on later occasions when my money hit my card around 12am and I purchased my ticket online, “he would say it’s not me it’s Greyhound.” We were saying it is you, you’re the only one here, and you’re not letting us in.
I don’t know the exact time, but shortly after midnight Ark had the idea to go get something to drink. Again, this is Tampa in August, it doesn’t cool off at night. We google mapped a gas station, and even though it was 3 to 5 miles away, we decided the hike would pass time. A few blocks into it, carrying my backpack and a 50lb bag of clothes, the idea didn’t seem as good as it did before we left.
We went down a street that was very active, seemed like a hipster area with bars and restaurants, complete with a homeless population panhandling.
We found a 7/11 and stopped there to purchase beverages. We walked two blocks up and found a pair of benches. We sat down not only to rest, but because it seemed like a better place to sit than in front of the Greyhound station.
A few people came by and sat next to us striking up conversation, which helped to pass the time. One individual had weed and said he needed to get a blunt to roll it. Ark gave him I think 57 cents to go to the 7/11 to get a blunt. We both waited in anticipation of his return, but it didn’t take long to realize that he got him for his 57 cents and was not returning to smoke with us. It was funny, he got us for $.57, #thirsty.
There was a guy on a bicycle pulling a small carriage offering rides yelling out “petty cab”. It seemed much too hot to be hauling people around on a bicycle but he was conditioned for the work. I wanted to see two 300 plus lb people squeeze in the back and see how that ride turned out.
Across the street there was a pizza place selling pizza by the slice. A man was treating a homeless man to a buffet of pizza. It smelled and looked good but I didn’t want to spend too much money being I was about to return to Denver, homeless, with nothing but a backpack and a bag of clothes. Eventually, the smell and sight of it was too much for me to resist and I decided to walk across the street and purchase a slice for both of us. I’d worry about the money later.
While I waited for the pizza, as they reheated it in the oven, a man walked by and asked either for change or a dollar. I already handed out some change, cigarettes and perhaps a dollar to others and felt like I reached my limit, so I told him I’m not going to be able to do it.
There were two guys with their dates eating pizza at the outdoor tables. The man asked them if they could help him out with anything. They began to ridicule him, asking him if he had anything he could help them out with and other derogatory commentary. I wanted to say something to them but there was no opening. I called the man back over and handed him a dollar or two. At which time one of the men said “see that’s that liberal enabling bullshit,” and this was the opening I was waiting for.
I told him “don’t worry about what the fuck I do with my money, and it isn’t liberal enabling bullshit, it’s balance, the same way that if you were in his situation you would hope somebody was able to and would help you.”
He said “he needs to get a job, pull himself up by the bootstraps, I’m from the hood,” (not sounding very much like he was from the hood), “why not buy him something to eat”?
I told them you don’t know what this man has been through in life that caused him to end up in this situation. Whatever he does with the money doesn’t make a difference. Even if he buys drugs or alcohol it lightens his burden and liberates him from some need or desire.
(I was much less smooth than I portray myself to be in the recreation due to being indignant)
He said something else and I said something punctuated by calling him a bitch and went back across the street to eat the pizza.
As far as the bootstraps comment was concerned, this man didn’t even have shoes on. I mean come on man, he literally has no bootstraps. lol. He must have been about 50 to 60 years old. In his youth he may remember segregation, his parents certainly would have, unable to get jobs and education based on race, and consequently, less opportunities for income, leading to a less stable home environment due to economic stress, affecting his development, and having less to support him with. The facts remain that A: most people are without enough money to create their own opportunities. B: there are not enough opportunities for everyone who needs a job to have a job. C: the opportunities that do exist are often too meager in terms of wages for an individual to meet their needs,) which is evident by the large percentage of people who work, but also receive food share benefits.
We ate the pizza and a guy sat down by us whose name I do not recall. Lil Ark gave the man the rest of his pizza, almost the whole piece. He told a few stories and then asked if I could get him a steel reserve because the woman at the 7/11 didn’t allow him in the store. I told him I would and he handed me a handful of change. He said “there’s enough there”, but I doubted there was without counting it. I put the change in my backpack, but when I arrived at the 7/11, they only had the small single cans. I bought him a 4 loco, and bought myself one as well. Seemed appropriate to have a drink with him while we were passing time, and he seemed excited about the Four.
Across the street a drunk man jumped in front of a car and was talking with this group by the pizza place about suicide. They sat him down, consoled him, then called the police. Someone he knew was nearby however, and agreed to take him home. Otherwise the person sitting with us said they were going to take him to some mental health facility, the name of which I do not recall. I thought it was fucked up, because it was a group of I think 3 women, and they sat him down and were talking sweet to him. The whole time knowing they called the police on him. When the police arrived he was sleeping in the chair.
I don’t remember the exact time but I think we left around 4 to 430am. I believe the Greyhound opened at 5:30am, and my bus left at 6 or near to it. I went to the bathroom to change and take a wet wipe shower. I gave Ark a plain black shirt because he had been sweating all day and night in the one he was wearing. He was waiting for his mother to get ahold of his uncle to buy him a ticket back to Little Rock.
He told me the day prior he biked 5 to 10 miles ( I don’t remember the distance), then walked because the bike broke. Finally, he was picked up and given a ride to the Greyhound station. Shortly after the station opened my bus arrived, although it was delayed for some reason or another.
As tired as I was, it was difficult to sleep. The discomfort of the bus is offset only by the anxiety of arriving in a city with about $100 and no place to go. Although I did arrange a few possibilities for sleeping accommodations through craigslist, I had at least one night outside because my bus wouldn’t be arriving until after midnight.
I arrived on Friday night or technically Saturday morning a little after midnight. There was a 50/50 chance that the day labor agency Iron Man would be open. As far as I knew there were no buses running, and at the time, I didn’t know what buses to take to get where I was going, despite having google maps. Iron Man was 6.2 miles away. I tried to use my debit card to order an Uber, but the app didn’t accept my debit card. I walked to Iron Man, but I was fortunate to find a cart about half way there. I did not feel great about pushing my bag in a shopping cart down residential streets at 1 to 2am, but I also didn’t want to continue to carry a 50lb bag of clothes, mind you, I did not have a shoulder strap, only a handle.
I think I reached Iron Man by about 2am. There was a bench for a bus stop across the street. I put on an extra pair of pants, used my backpack as a pillow, and went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning and walked across the street to Iron Man. I waited until after 7 o’clock before I decided to leave presuming they didn’t have work that day.
I went to the Aurora Public Library. Later I was able to book a couch to sleep on. After I went to the library I went to Walmart to purchase a towel and body wash to take a shower at my sleeping accommodation. I didn’t want to bring my bag of clothes into Walmart, not that I was all that inconspicuous in regard to my situation, a tall white guy carrying around a large bag and a backpack tends to stand out in the primarily hispanic community. I set my bag of clothes behind a large truck parked in a lot that was closed, and not visible from any angle people would come from.
I walked away but was suspicious of a man across the street who was looking down at the ground and seemingly trying to wait on something while not looking like he was waiting on something. I considered retrieving my bag but thought I was just being paranoid. When I returned from Walmart no more than 15 minutes later my bag was gone.
Now I was down to my laptop, a few items in my backpack, and the clothes on my back. I tried to walk in the directions the perpetrator could have gone but there was no sign of my bag or anyone with it. I was upset with myself for being so stupid with the bag. Almost as much as the loss of clothes, I was upset that I carried this bag around for nearly two days when I could have just as well left it and saved myself the encumbrance.
I don’t remember how many days I slept outside but I believe it was until at least Tuesday, although I felt much better after working on Monday being able to purchase jeans, a hoodie, some t-shirts, and some socks. I did not have room in my backpack for underwear, so I used Goldbond body powder as a substitute, which eliminated friction between my skin and the jeans.
Sometime during the first week I found a woman who was renting out floor space for $20 a night. I stayed there two nights, the second night, after not being able to take a shower because I arrived too late and was leaving too early I decided it was going to be my last night there. During the night she woke me up and told me to roll over because I was snoring. In the morning I was stuffing a plastic bag into my backpack and she started about that. I said something that expressed my disapproval and left the house.
I found another woman who rented me a bed for $15 a night named Brandy. Brandy was extremely nice and accommodating. She had a pullout bed underneath her bed that I slept on.
I placed an ad on craigslist for a furnished room I could rent on a week to week basis. There are plenty of spam sites that respond as if they have a room, but actually only link you to a site where people rent rooms.
I received a text for an RV for $140 a week and I replied that I would come and take a look after work. The only issue I had is the lot is across hwy 285, so I had to cross a highway to get to it. Otherwise there was access by walking on the shoulder by the onramp, or cross at a set of lights a ways down then either walk the shoulder, or as I later discovered, there was a bike trail that ran along the back, and a hill providing access to a trail to the trailer lot. Any alternative route besides crossing resulted in probably a quarter mile or more of extra walking. Unfortunately, between certain times it couldn’t be crossed due to the flow of traffic.
The RV exceeded my expectations. It was basically a modern studio apartment. Stove, fridge, running water, tv, satellite, shower, toilet, and a bed. It also had a remote-controlled vent in the bedroom. While the amenities are all things you would find in normal living accommodations, when someone tells you they have an RV for rent, that could be any pile of boards that someone managed to stack on a trailer with a door.
I wanted to rent it. I explained to him my situation, but he wanted a reference. Earlier that day I worked with Darren, and worked with him on several other occasions previously, including before I left for Florida. Darren was a smooth dude, said he came from Chicago, was easy to get along with, and did his business stylistically real. The stylistic distinction of real is to be who you are during work, and deal with customers how you would deal with friends, as opposed to professionalism, where you play a fake subordinate role.
Darren had done some traveling, told me about how people in Florida would tell on each other to the boss. I gave him one of my cards with my website info, and we had a brief discussion about some related material. He wanted to start a shipping container living space business where he would make a house out of shipping containers and sell it. It seems like it is a growing market, but like most people, I don’t think Darren has the money or the credit to start it. I am confident he has the salesmanship to be successful if he had the money.
While I appreciated the reference, I appreciated something he said in the reference even more later. Very much so later, as I only recognized the significance recalling it now. He said “what you see is what you get”. For a person who is as he is, it is refreshing to have that recognized, especially since I consider myself through multiple lenses.
Alberto was satisfied with the reference and let me move in that night. Which was important because I think I was going to be on the street that night. Brandy had a young son, and although she extended the invitation to stay when her son was there, it was not something I was interested in doing. She had him every other week, but I don’t think I was on the streets after the initial period for more than a week.
9/2017 to 10/2017 Iron Man
I was working through a day labor service called Iron Man. The pay wasn’t good, $10 per hour, but I wasn’t yet situated where I could go two weeks without a paycheck. Additionally, with overtime, there weren’t a lot of better opportunities without a car. With a car, during the summer I could make 150 a day, sometimes more. On one occasion I made $266, which was probably my best CL day in Denver, but I also worked 18 hours.
Iron Man was a cool place to work through. It still doesn’t feel great being soft pimped, as in you do the work and a person makes money from the labor you perform. But the environment, and for the most part, the people who worked there were cool. There was a fenced area on the side of it that separated the front from the back. There were seats and usually in the morning people would go out there to chop it up and smoke a little weed to get the day going. Sometimes when we returned after work there would be people either who got back earlier or didn’t get sent out, drinking and kicking it inside the fence.
I worked for a company called Event Rents most of the time I worked through Iron Man. They set up tents and rented event related items, which we would deliver, pick up, unload, and maintain. I enjoyed going out on the routes, and the workers at ER were cool, created an environment conducive to a good time while working. We joked and kept the work day entertaining.
The only job I didn’t enjoy was a few times when I was stationed in chairs. Chairs was the most monotonous job at ER. Although there were an adequate amount of breaks, you stood in one spot wiping down folding chairs with a rag and stacked them on a cart.
The guy in chairs, I think his name was Dave, also shared his right-wing headlines and prepackaged political points. I wanted to respond but the amount of ground we would have to traverse in order for us to begin to have a discussion probably couldn’t be crossed without me being sent home.
I wrote
A guy comes out on break time bragging about how jobs have increased under Trump and how food share recipients have decreased. This is followed up by a comment about fake news, but there is no place to start a conversation for the following reasons
1: The assertions are probably made by Trump or people from his administration, and any evidence to the contrary would be considered fake news, even by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
2: While the assertions could be checked by comparing the unemployment rate from January to the present, against the workforce participation rate, the economic activity occurring this year is largely the result of momentum from the previous administration’s policies. Although in most cases the economy is less a product of public policy and more the product of consumer spending and investment.
3: The unemployment rate has been falling for a long time, but the workforce participation rate has been falling with it, meaning by not counting people because of the length of time they have been unable to find work, it reduces the unemployment rate by reducing the number of people who are considered unemployed, even though they are not employed, nor are they physically or mentally disabled, and not retired or attending school.
4: Even if it is true that the number of food share recipients decreased, this does not mean it is the result of better opportunities causing people to not need it. It could just as well be the result of changing what is required to qualify for food benefits, raising income qualifications, drug testing, etc. In other words, even if the fact is a fact, it tells us nothing about what caused its existence. Later while reading a source for the number of food share benefits who were working, the article mentioned that Florida increased the qualifications for food share recipients, and as we have probably all seen, certain states have moved to revoke aid for individuals who fail drug tests, which is suggestive of the explanation I provided for the decrease in food share recipients in this point.
There was talk of going to Houston where we would get 70 hours a week if we went. I signed up. Unfortunately, even though Leon told me he had jobs lined up for months, we didn’t go to Houston. This week I worked a Saturday and Etillio asked me if I could work Sunday as well. I told him I would be there.
The following is how I recorded the event on my FB post which is more accurate than reproducing the dialogue from memory due to the time that has passed since the incident.
He told me to come on Sunday. The bus doesn’t run until later than I need it, so I walk 45 minutes to get there, and I am the second person to arrive. He tells me we are going to Event Rents the same place I have gone every day this week. Later he explains they dropped their request from 10 people down to 3, and he was not sending me out.
The first reason he gave is the company did not like to pay overtime, and I had 58 hours this week, but the week is Sunday to Saturday, meaning it was the beginning of a new week and overtime did not matter. I asked him if overtime was an issue then why did he ask me to come back Sunday on Saturday? This was clearly bullshit.
In addition to the BS overtime excuse he sent a person out that A wasn’t there yesterday and therefore wasn’t told to come back, and B, it was his second time coming this week when I am there every day making the company money. Shit on the regulars to cater to people who work 1 to 2 days a week seemed backwards to me and I wasn’t the only one he has done this to.
With no good reason why he didn’t send me out, he commented on my animated state, but it is natural to become indignant when you have been treated unfairly, and if not unfairly then it would be easy to provide the basis for determining who will be sent out and who will not. The purpose of initiating the conversation was to express my displeasure, that he’s wrong, and to make known that I disagree with the decision
On Monday I came in and sat outside after signing in, probably blowing some weed with my co-workers. Nearly an hour goes by and the people going to Event Rents are all called and my name is not among them. While the previous day there was tension and probably elevated audibility to my voice, I didn’t say anything that was disrespectful; only attempted to inquire how he makes the decision of who will go out and who will not go out. Clearly, it wasn’t based on who arrived first, who he told to come back the next day, who made the company the most money, and who had history with the client.
I went into the office and asked if he was sending me out? I still had to be paid from Saturday, so he said he was giving me my last check. I snapped a little bit, told him I wasn’t leaving without an explanation, how does he determine who goes out and who does not. He told me to leave, but I refused.
A woman in the office asked me what happened. I told the story referring to Etillio as a bitch and other disrespectful and derogatory terms. He said “you can’t talk to me like that”, I said I just did, proved you wrong, that was easy. Eventually I left. I took the bus to another labor hall and they sent me out the same day so it wasn’t much of a setback.
I think the reason was to see how I would respond, he may test the willingness of people to submit to his authority. I would have been satisfied with him saying he puts names in a hat, as at least there would be some explanation for how the decision is reached. Everyone, especially a person who does something like send people out to work every day, has to have a process for who they are going to send and who they are not going to send. All I asked was how that process worked so I could know why I wasn’t sent out after I made the company money all week, I was the second person there, I was told to come in the day before, and I worked every day and had a good relationship with the client.
JR Butler Stretches
I was working through Trojan Labor for a company called JR Butler, assisting in the process of installing windows for a high rise on 16th and Chestnut in downtown Denver. As far as day labor jobs go, this was one of the better companies I worked for.
I remember after the first day, I was told we meet on the 16th floor at 7:00am for group exercise. I thought he was joking. The next morning I came in and went to the 16th floor where they were doing group stretches. Although many of these stretches are stretches I have done on my own in my personal time, I did not want to be part of this. Plus, in order for me to do many of these jobs, especially through a day labor service, I needed to smoke weed in the morning. This probably contributed to my decision not to participate. Leo, an employee of JR Butler told me “don’t be shy, come on and get some.” To which I responded “I did some before I came in, you know I don’t want to overdo it”. This was actually a scene I reenacted from Reno 911 when an undercover acting coach started off with stretches and Junior said the same thing. The following days I would meet the crew on the floor we worked on in order to not disrupt the group activity, or decrease the morale towards the activity.
11/2017
Losing Trailer
I was working for RC Events through craigslist, taking down tents and picking up tables and chairs for an event across the street from the civic center in downtown Denver. After work I needed cigarettes, so I didn’t catch the bus that brought me down to get back. Instead I walked away from that stop to find a corner store and I eventually found a liquor store. It was a long strenuous day so in addition to the cigarettes I purchased two 24oz cans of Miller Genuine Draft. I didn’t drink very often but I really felt like having a beer after that day. I drank both beers on my way to the light rail station, sharing one with an individual I met who was with a friend at the Auraria station. I don’t remember their names.
Possibly because I was buzzed and listening to music, I got off the train a stop too early, at Evans station instead of Englewood station. I passed the station a few times on the route 21 bus, but I wasn’t sure if the 27 stopped there or not, and I half thought I was at the right station.
A woman was sitting down presumably waiting for a bus. Initially I walked past her to see if the stop lists the 27 which it did not. Her name was Alona and she told me the 27 didn’t come to this stop, that I’d have to take the 21 to Federal. Or I could have got back on the light rail, but conversation ensued.
She talked about a legal issue, which in hindsight was probably something she made up because I didn’t hear too much more about it for the next few months I knew her. I gave a brief rundown of a Center for Economic Planning and she seemed interested in the material.
I slipped in a few jokes, the likes of which would have been situational and I don’t remember much more of what we discussed.
We entered the bus, exchanged a few words, but since I didn’t have my card I asked her to write down my website, and then told her she can take my number down if she wants to call me. She wrote the number on the corner of an advertisement she had with her. I caught her smiling as she exited the bus.
After a few days she called me and I was glad to hear from her, because when she didn’t call right away, I figured she wasn’t interested. She called a few days later and we made plans to meet up either later that night or the next day.
We hooked up a few times and then I took a break from her for reasons I won’t go into. A woman I hooked up with in Colorado Springs wanted to see me again but those plans fell through and I eventually returned Alona’s call.
I mention Alona for a few different reasons. 1st she is probably indirectly responsible for getting me kicked out of my trailer. 2nd, she was present during a fairly valuable interaction with the Sheridan Police. (3) She is also one of the few women I’ve kept contact with over the last few years. Once I began interstate moving the women I met were typically one night hook ups because I was traveling so often.
3: Introduced me to case law governing police authority, Terry V. Ohio.
I believe I was kicked out of the trailer because of a text I accidently sent to my landlord that was in response to nonsense she was texting me. She wrote “…and by the way I am pregnant”. This wasn’t possible at the time. I think it was about 2.5 weeks since she came over the first time, but I didn’t even finish in her until about the 3rd visit, so we were looking at about a week to week and a half. She said she couldn’t get pregnant, otherwise I would have pulled out.
She texts: “…and by the way I am pregnant”
I texted back “lol, wow, your life just got harder.” (4)
4: Just to reiterate, I knew she wasn’t pregnant, or at least she wasn’t pregnant by me, had she been. I don’t want that statement to come off the wrong way. If there was a possibility she was pregnant by me my response may have been different.
She wrote “my doctor was pissed you broke the stitches.”
I wrote “what stitches?”
She wrote back, “please nigga, already dead and gone, the ones that held my cervix shut.”
I texted, “I am going to politely ask you to lose my number. Please lose my number”
She texts, “you broke my stitches, I didn’t think I could get pregnant, sorry for whatever reason you don’t want to kick it and teach me some politics.”
I wrote to her “you lie too much. Not mad, enjoyed your company but I can’t do that brand of bullshitting.”
At one point during the exchange I received a text from my landlord. I looked up why a woman would have her cervix sewn shut. The only explanation I found was a cervical cerclage which is a procedure to strengthen the womb of pregnant women. I texted him “if you had a cervical cerclage, it means you were already pregnant.”
Later she said it was a hysterectomy but if she had a hysterectomy, getting pregnant isn’t possible. The point being, I didn’t know I texted him for a few days and it is possible that he gave me notice to vacate because he thought I got someone pregnant and would be trying to raise a family in his RV. I don’t know.
Prior to reaching this point, there was a time I met Alona near the crossing where I was staying and we were stopped by the Sheridan Police.
I wrote two posts chronicling the event.
I had the misfortune of being detained by law enforcement. Myself and a female sat down on the way to my place. An officer pulled up and turned his lights on. He came out of the car and said what’s up. I was aggravated because he stopped me when I wasn’t doing anything. I was non-compliant and became animated. He stated all he needed to stop us was reasonable suspicion, and reasonable suspicion was based on the store we were sitting by, being robbed multiple times recently.
I asked what was it about me that caused him to believe that I burglarized the store or was about to burglarize the store? He refused to answer my question, only reasserting that he had reasonable suspicion. The goal was for him to admit his profiling basis. (something better applied by racial minorities, but there is a reason he chose to stop us and I wanted to know what it was)
After a brief period of yelling back and forth, including threats to taze me, I sat down and surrendered my ID. 3 more squad cars arrived, at which time the basis for the stop changed to “trespassing”, for the minute we stopped so she could retrieve a cigarette from her bag.
Another officer cited Terry vs Ohio which I learned was the legal justification for reasonable suspicion. I asked how the details of the case related to this situation. He only repeated the explanation: a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed, could be committed, or is being committed based on the officer’s experience and the totality of the circumstances. Because they changed the reason for the stop to trespassing, a crime was being committed through our presence, and therefore they had reasonable suspicion, or actually probable cause. Reasonable suspicion to investigate whether we have permission to be on the property and then probable cause once they discover we do not have permission. Initially it was our proximity to a place that had been burglarized in the past, as stated by the officer who made the stop.
Upon reading the synopsis of the case I discovered the case that establishes reasonable suspicion consisted of two individuals ritually walking back and forth in front of a store. They were joined by a third and were clearly surveying the business with the intent to rob it. In our situation, there is a man and a woman who briefly stopped at a ledge which was nearly the same distance from the sidewalk as it was to the store. A reasonable person would survey the area and conclude, if people needed to stop, this would be the only place in the area to do so, because there are no other places to stop; aside from sitting on the sidewalk which I presume would be in violation of an ordinance prohibiting obstruction of the sidewalk. There was no reason “based on the totality of the circumstances” to believe a crime was committed, was about to be committed, or was being committed”.
If the officer had a hunch based on the store being burglarized before, good police work would have been continued observation, not using reasonable suspicion as an excuse to detain us. Again, retroactively, upon the arrival of additional officers, trespassing was used as further justification because we sat on a ledge that was property of the store front, but this was not the stated reason for the detention. We were there less than 2 minutes so she could get a cigarette and lighter from her bag. When the officer pulled up, we were already walking away.
(Note: I was very ignorant of the law. This was my initial analysis and was incorrect. I still had an anti-police bias at that time from spending roughly the first 30 years of life involved in criminal activity and the natural difference of interest that forms between criminals and police. It was my first exposure to case law and opened up an interest in the subject.)
I enjoyed Alona’s company and I can’t understate how important her company was to me during that time. Socially we were always laughing even when she was on BS. I didn’t get mad at her about it. I just played with it, told her the things she was saying weren’t true, and then I’d question her about it to a place where she’d get off it and we’d get on something else. Sex was really good as well. Unless we were in a car or if it was a quick encounter because I had to work the next day we would usually have multi-hour sessions. In fact one of my favorite encounters was in the back of her supposedly ex man’s Suburban. I didn’t care if she was still messing with the dude or not so long as she didn’t bring me back any diseases. She put an air mattress in the back that quickly lost it’s air but it was a good time.
After I was kicked out of the trailer I still saw her semi-regularly. I saw her through most of 2018. I’d rent hotel rooms when I would have a few days between interstate moving trips and would be in Denver. The last time I saw her must have been October or November of 2018. It was sometime before I went to Kansas City and participated in a group discussion about race because there was an incident I brought up from our last meeting, and I left for Florida within days after attending that group. I was arrested in Florida On December 2nd after being there 2 days.
Since I mentioned it the incident was insignificant but what was said at the group was not insignificant. After we left the hotel we stopped at a Taco Bell. We were joking and laughing as we placed the order. After we received our order we were missing two tacos. I went back through the drive through and the women refused to give us the two tacos we ordered and I was animated in my response to that. I presumed at that time that they were upset that they were working and we came through clearly enjoying ourselves as much as we were enjoying ourselves and just wanted to put some shit in our night. There was no other reason for it. I also had a substantial amount of cash that I fanned to them emphasizing that I didn’t need to lie about the tacos.
During this group I brought up that I tend to wonder why I’m treated the way I’m treated sometimes, and commented that if I was black, that each time I receive less than acceptable treatment, I would have to wonder if that treatment was racially motivated. I may have also brought up the fact that the promotion of racism probably causes black people to consider race to be a motivator when it usually is not.
After making this statement I was asked to provide some examples. I mentioned fast food service and told the story that at the time was recent service in Chicago that seemed less than reasonable, and the incident with Alona. After telling him about the incident with Alona he said “what color were they”? They were black and hispanic. It was also in Monticello, and prior to that incident Alona said they were racist in Monticello. I don’t know if the treatment was based on race but at that time I didn’t even consider race as an element that motivated treatment.
That incident in Kansas City was significant because what he said was a possibility that I hadn’t considered prior to him bringing it up.
Alona continued to contact me until about February of 2021. Every once in a while she would send me a text or call me. In February of 2021 she probably found the prospect of a serious relationship and knew I wouldn’t do that with her, and probably doubted whether or not I’d ever be back through Denver. She texted me that she thought it was best that we sever ties and I sent her a thumbs up and haven’t heard from her.
(Note: She called and texted me after this. I ended up seeing her in December 2022, rented a hotel and spent 2 to 3 days with her. She fell off physically. Lost weight and didn’t look as good as she did in 2017)
Out of the Trailer and Into the Car
About a week prior to getting notice from Alberto that he wanted me to move, he said he was barely breaking even, and was otherwise complaining about money. I told him Ill purchase the propane which is 75$ for as long as I am going to be staying there.
I had 7 days before I was going to be leaving. I was looking on Craigslist for a car and found one that seemed to be mechanically sound despite high mileage. After a brief test drive I bought the car. The next day I woke up and the propane was empty.
While at work, I received a text from Alberto saying he bought propane and it would be $75. I had 6 days until I had to be out and I was not about to pay 75$ to buy propane for him, when I was only going to be staying there 6 more days. I had a text message from the last time propane was purchased. It was 42 days ago. 6 days of propane at $75 for 42 days was 1.71 per day, and came out to roughly 11 dollars for 6 days. I texted this to him and told him I would give him $11, and he texted back that he wanted half or I could be out that night. I was pissed by the ultimatum, but I was supposed to be paying rent for my final week that night, basically it was a matter of saving $151 if I left a week early. I didn’t respond, mainly because I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, especially considering I am a quality tenant, paid rent every week, maintained the trailer, and didn’t feel like I gave him any reason to come at me like that.
When I got home from work I packed all my belongings into my car. I texted him that he could stop by tomorrow to pick up rent and the money for the propane. The goal was to spend one more night in the trailer.
Unfortunately, he and his girlfriend who waited in the car came by later that night. I was pissed, told him he was out his rabid ass mind if he thought I was giving him anything; rabid ass mind was a saying my deceased aunt used to use. It was his trailer, he helped me by renting it to me, and if he wanted me out I had to leave, no matter how abrupt, unfair, or how unkind the notice was.
This situation was not good for me. I needed the week to work to have money for insurance and registration. Worse still, the next day was thanksgiving and so I wouldn’t be able to work that day. I had maybe $120, meaning I wouldn’t have been able to pay my rent and propane anyway, but had I given Alberto $100, I’m confident he would have let me give him the remaining 80 on Friday.
The first day was difficult, partially because I am transitioning to different shelter accommodations, but more so because I pulled myself into this spiral of thought that produced a great deal of stress. You only feel a certain way because you are thinking about something that causes you to feel that way. Despite knowing this, there are times when circumstances are too overwhelming to make use of, even for a person who considers what he can do to create a favorable outcome, and ignores the contingencies he has no control over. I had no insurance on this car and I had no plates. My only thought was if I get pulled over they are probably taking the car. If they take the car I am basically where I was 3 months ago, but much worse off due to the changing of the season. I kept rolling it over and over in my head. I was going to have to find work over the weekend, avoid the police not only when I am driving but also when I am parked to sleep, and the best-case scenario is I have the money for insurance and plates by Monday, which is 4 days away. Again, it was Thanksgiving so I wasn’t going to be able to find work that day. All I could do was sit and think, which did nothing in terms of progress towards achieving these critical objectives.
Later that night I found an ad to unload a truck for $14 an hour cash the next morning, something that eased my mind enough for me to sleep.
In the morning I arrived at the location which was a Christmas tree point of sale located on Santa Fe. I asked a person if he was here to unload trucks, I think his name was Shane, and he told me he was and I should go over by the entrance to wait for Pete. There were others waiting in the same location. The first semi backed in and we started unloading massive trees, some probably near 15ft. We unloaded the large trees, and then some wreaths and smaller trees. There was a second truck, but being that we unloaded the first truck in about an hour to an hour and a half, I was worried it may only be a 3-hour day. Fortunately, there was a third truck, which we finished around 2:30. This gave us 6 hours on the day, but then Shane told me Pete needed someone to go with him to work at another location.
We drove to the other location which was about an hour drive because of traffic, and stayed there until about 5:30, finally getting back to the Santa Fe location around 6:30. I got 10 hours and a much needed $140. In addition, Pete asked me to come back the next morning.
The following morning, I arrived early. A worker from the day before came up to my window while I was smoking a bowl before I got started. We talked about how fast people were working the day before, agreeing that we are paid by the hour, and other worker interest related talk.
We started the day unloading a truck. The guy who came up to my car window was a tyrant with the other workers, shouting commands, telling them to hurry up, and insulting their intelligence telling them to watch out for the wheel multiple times as the truck moved, as if they were not of the mind to avoid the semi as it moved. I was very irritated with him, especially since we just discussed work the previous day the way we had. Talking about the field to me in the morning, and then once work began ran into the house. I wanted to confront him about it but he gave me no in.
Once we finished unloading the truck, Shane and the tyrant, who I figured probably snitched on me about smoking weed in the parking lot and shared other things I said, went off to help Pete try to find the source of a power outage in the trailer which served as the office. I told the other workers that dude just started yesterday, he’s a CL worker just like the rest of us, and basically, they didn’t have listen to what he was saying. One of the guys said “I thought he was the owner the way he was acting.”
Shortly thereafter, Pete sent the tyrant home and another guy, I think the one who made the comment about thinking the tyrant was the owner. Shane and another worker were sent to the other location, although Shane wanted to take me.
The rest of the day we loaded a flatbed a few times with trees, set trees up on display from inventory, and tied a few trees onto people’s cars. I was frustrated because Pete wanted all of us to assist customers as well as complete other jobs we were tasked with, but at least with me, he didn’t provide me with any of the information required to assist customers. I had no prices, no information about the differences of the trees, and was ill equipped to perform with any degree of effectiveness. I brought a tree up for customers, but there was no tag for them to bring in to pay for the tree and check out. We waited until one of the other guys brought a sales tag and put his name on it. I wasn’t too concerned about him getting credit for the sale because I had no tags, prices or info to make any sales. At one point he put prices on a few of the trees, and so I was like ok, all the trees here are the same prices as the 5 out of 1000s of trees in the lot? It was frustrating, to the point where when a customer would ask me about a tree I’d tell them to find a sales person.
I started at 8:30am, and we finished at 9:30pm. 13 hours. I’m called into the trailer at the end of the day and Pete tells me he doesn’t have the cash on him to pay me. He had a check book and I was going to take a check but he said if you’re coming back tomorrow I can pay you cash. Then he went into some areas that were suspect.
He asked me if I knew anyone here working at the lot. He told me he wanted to put me on payroll, which I didn’t have too much of a problem with, but he also said he’s trying to keep this sinking ship afloat. I wasn’t sure how the ship was sinking when he had about a million dollars’ worth of merchandise, and was distributing large quantities of trees to other lots all over Denver and beyond. All of which caused me to be suspicious of him. I told him I could do payroll but not until Monday or Tuesday.
There were two people who told me they saw a CL ad where people were accusing Pete of not paying them. I was worried about this during the evening as I was trying to fall asleep, and felt stupid for not taking the check.
The next morning, I arrived about a half hour before I was scheduled to, because I was not going to work another day before I was paid for the previous day. He already had people there unloading a truck. I waited until he was finished and expressed to him that I wanted to square up for yesterday before I got started today.
We went into the office and he handed me $140 and I told him it was short, I should have had 13 hours at $14 per hour. He told me we didn’t get paid for the hour when the electricity went out, which is bullshit because we are still there and it is our time, and then he told me working the lot was only $12 per hour, as he handed me the other $4. He asked if I wanted to work and I did, but I told him I needed cash at the end of the day.
He said he’ll put me on payroll, and if I do a good job, (which he knows I do) he wouldn’t take any taxes out. He said he’d give me a 60% draw daily, but when I asked when I would receive the other 40% I did not get a straight answer on that. 60% of 12$ is about 7.50 an hour, and I was not about to work for $7.50 an hour. I speculated that he would probably keep the 40% and claim it went to taxes despite not filling out a w4 or any other paperwork.
The biggest thing was if he is paying people cash daily, why couldn’t he pay me cash as well? He said people liked to cherry pick him, so putting people on payroll was a way to make sure they worked for him consistently, but I worked 23 hours for him the last two days, and was there early the third day, there was no reason to believe I would be inconsistent in terms of attendance. In fact, during the second day, I felt as if I found something to put myself in a great position moving forward. Probably 25 days of work, making $170 a day, I could potentially save $3000 in less than a month. But he was on bullshit.
That Sunday I found an unloading gig, where I worked less than 2 hours and made $100. The next day I went to LA Insurance and purchased a policy for a little over $170. Afterwards I went to the DMV, but in Colorado, you have to go to the DMV in the county where your address is, so I was sent to another DMV to register the car and get the temporary plates. I drove to Overland Pond Park, which was my new residence after the RV eviction. I told myself see, all that stressing you were doing on Thursday was for no reason.
I found other jobs, many coming through a guy named Dan who contracted moving labor services. I also worked for a woman who contracted junk removal services named Pam with a man named Don who she also hired. She paid well and it was a cool work environment. I worked regularly for a man named Calvin “Corona” Mier who contracted construction labor services with construction companies. In March I found a moving job, began as a driver, after my first trip I was promoted to foreman, and a few months later I was in a partnership with the owner of the company.
2018 March to November
I didnt record any journal entries during this period while interstate moving.
12/2/2018 to 11/2020
See the Florida Ordeal.
Sunday, November 8th, 2020
In 2015 when my van broke down in San Francisco, San Francisco health and human services offered shelter the first day I identified myself as being homeless. I presumed San Diego would be similar. I purchased a plane ticket for $27 flying out of Chicago, O’Hare. I was arriving Sunday afternoon, and posted an ad on CL to see if I could rent a place to sleep for the night and was able to secure an overnight stay for Sunday, believing I could go to human services Monday and get a shelter bed.
My first order of business was to purchase a THC cartridge. This was imperative business to me to take away the stress of being in a new area and figuring a lot of things out on the fly. The first dispensary I looked up was nearby. I walked to it and there was no dispensary at that location. I googled another dispensary that was supposed to be near university avenue and about 3 blocks from I think I15 and there was no dispensary there. I went to a taqueria and purchased a Torta which was one of the worst tortas I’ve ever tasted. I called Gerry (CL room) and he offered to pick me up, my location not being far from his house.
He was older and mentioned that he lived alone, appreciated the company, and mentioned he recently had hernia surgery and claimed he broke his hip from his dog pulling him over. There was some other conversation but I noticed an assortment of items sitting on the chair that looked like they belonged somewhere else. I asked him if he wanted me to move the items and he said he didn’t know where he wanted to put them yet. He told me I could go check out the room.
The room was perfect for the night. A couch with blankets and a fan. I like a fan to fall asleep. I laid down for about an hour and then went back to the house. I didn’t want to just go in the room and not provide some company or assistance as I agreed to do. In the house the second time he asked me if I partied. I asked what he meant by that since that term means a lot of different things to different people. No one has actually ever smoked crack or meth, it hasn’t happened, that’s just partying. In this case he was talking about meth. I told him I didn’t do that. I pretty much only smoke weed although there are times when I’ve done other drugs (like cocaine) but didn’t really do it. In social settings and I’m drinking with people who are doing cocaine I’ll do a line with them. It feels good for a little bit and then I become stupid, and there are people who I used to associate with who liked to give me a line just for those purposes. A little while later he asked if I wanted to smoke or snort some meth. I declined. I presume this was probably an effort to work up towards some sexual end that he believed the meth would have facilitated.
Shortly after I declined the offer he received a phone call he said was from his brother. He went into his den area and when he came out he said he had to go fix a furnace at an apartment. I went to the guest house and relaxed for a little while. A few hours later he texted me he’d be back in 5 minutes. Probably an hour, maybe a little longer after that I texted him to ask if I could use the bathroom he told me to come in. I used the bathroom. We exchanged a few words and I told him I appreciated him letting me sleep in his guest house, it really helped me out.
Monday, November 9th, 2020
I don’t remember the exact time I left but I believe it was about 7:30. I just remember wanting to get to human services at about the time they opened. I went to 7/11 which was about 4 blocks from his house, purchased water, a string cheese, and something else I cannot remember. San Diego HHS is not like San Francisco HHS. They do not place people in shelters and they don’t immediately do an interview and provide you with an EBT card like they do in SF. I filled out an application and was told I would be receiving a call for an interview later in the day.
I went to the library located near 28th and Ocean something, which was a street not near the ocean. I thought the library was the building on the corner so I went to the park which was next to the building under construction. While I was waiting for the call I began working on ASC. The phone eventually rang and the woman on the other end conducted a preliminary interview and during this time I revealed that I had misdemeanor warrants in Wisconsin which disqualified me from receiving general relief. General relief when I was in SF was only $60 a month so I wasn’t too disappointed. She said it didn’t affect my Calfresh. At the conclusion of the interview she told me someone would be calling later in the day to schedule an appointment. Later I received a phone call from the same number. I picked up the phone but there was nothing there. I presumed the call dropped. I called the number back but it didn’t accept incoming calls.
My next challenge was figuring out my sleeping situation for that night. I went to the old town station and discovered my day pass granted me access to the trolley. The trolley isn’t a trolley in the traditional sense like San Francisco or Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, it’s a train like they have in most cities. As I entered the train there was already someone laying down which increased my confidence in the idea. In Denver the police do not allow you to sleep on the trains. This was one positive for San Diego.
It was difficult to fall asleep on the train. It seemed like as soon as I was able to make some progress towards entering actual sleep transit security would wake me up for my pass. Then I’d scan and go back to sleep. Most of the time you’re not actually sleeping, you’re just laying there with your eyes closed trying to become comfortable enough to go to sleep. You may get a half hour to an hour of actual sleep per session.
My sleep schedule was divided into sessions from about 8pm to 12am when the train stopped running and then about 4am to 8am after the train resumed operation. In those 8 hours I might sleep two hours at most depending on assholes and asshole security who would wake me up to check my pass multiple times as if my day pass could somehow expire in the same day.
My first night after the train stopped running I had a conversation with a guy who was really into heavy metal and looked just as into crystal meth as he was into heavy metal. Isn’t to knock him, I don’t look down on anyone for what they do to cope with their situation in life so long as how they do it doesn’t interfere with anyone elses liberty. He told me about a dispensary called Klover where they had high quality products. We had other conversations but I don’t remember what we discussed.
Later a man came over telling me he was Honduran and asked if I could look up the direction to his house. His name was Mario and among his stories he was a boxer who grew up in Mexico, his father was Italian, he had been all over the world, and a whole lot of other shit that I couldn’t definitively say was false, but most of it definitely wasn’t true. At one point in the conversation he said you know because I’m Mexican, and I said I thought you were Honduran. He laughed and was like ohhhhh knowing he was caught in that initial lie but it was just entertainment. I appreciated his company for passing the time.
Tuesday, November 10th, 2020
I went to HHS to explain what happened with the second phone call that dropped. The woman at the counter looked up my case and told me I had a phone interview scheduled for the 12th at 12:30pm.
After this I went to father Joe’s and filled out some paperwork to take a shower. Next was storage. There were multiple storage locations listed on the paper. The first one I went to was not the storage I was looking for. They did long term storage and I was looking for accessible storage where I could put my clothes up and drop off my coat for the day. This storage was located on 20th and commercial. A man named Chris went through the paperwork with me. I almost didn’t proceed with it because the woman told me I had to go through orientation at 10:30 and I didn’t realize it was already about 10:15. I almost canceled because I didn’t want to come back. That storage had a huge impact on my comfort. I also became acquainted with the Neil Center that I originally went to to charge my electronics.
I think I began riding the train early and may have done some editing of ASC on the train.
I rode the blue line instead of the green line this day and there was an issue towards the end of the running time where a train was pulled out of service and a replacement had to be brought in to complete the route. This train ran until 1:30am which was good for me because it meant I only had about 2 and a half hours instead of 4 hours to wait for the next train. In that wait I had a conversation with a man named Marcus who smoked a little weed with me as we listened to the other guy on the bench next to us play his music. He had some decent tracks on that play list, Dayton Family Shadows, and a few others. I remember that song because it isn’t a very common song.
Wednesday, November 11th, 2020
By now I’ve basically been up for 48 hours. I sleep but I do not sleep. I wake up prior to my alarm going off on the trolley. I should say I looked at my phone and saw that my alarm was set to go off soon so I decided to put my contacts in and proceed with my day. A man sits down in the seats across from me and is making an extremely annoying sound with his mouth. It isn’t some habit or trying to clear his teeth, it is seemingly done intent on bothering and antagonizing. I mimicked the sound adding some exaggeration to it. I don’t remember what I said to him but he asked if I had a problem. I said no, I didn’t have a problem until you sat down making those unecessary mother fucking noises.
He started saying thank you lord and some other Christian nonsense that implied he was restraining himself from escalating the confrontation through the power of his deity. He stopped making the noise except for a final 2 times which he did just prior to exiting. Then he contradicted his piety by getting up abruptly, scuttling his feet as if he was going to rush me. I watched out of the corner of my eye and was unimpressed with his effort to intimidate, hoping he would have because then I would have been justified in whooping his ass. I’m typically not a violent person, but I have proven effective at it and in the absence of sleep we are all more aggressive than we otherwise would be. The contradiction is if you are acting in your faith by not escalating and then you make an effort to pretend like you’re going to escalate intent on intimidation you cannot be sincere in mercy while trying to cause fear. Yes I would have liked to whoop his ass because as I mentioned, the act seemed intentional.
I went to the neil center to charge my electronics. Storage was not open because of veterans day.
I was waiting on the benches on the greenline. I was actually writing something similar to this, reflecting on the few days I’d been in San Diego. The transit police asked me if I was catching a train. I defensively told them I did but I was waiting because it was a peak time for passengers so I didn’t want to crowd the train for the regular commuters. I had a day pass which he checked and I told him I can either wait here on the bench or I can get on the train. He told me I should get on the next train.
In this situation with almost no sleep in the last few days, having called the two shelter numbers on the human services handout and neither having answered, I decided I didn’t have enough problems at the moment and wanted to see if I could fetch another. I thought about it and I didn’t believe he had the authority to tell me to get on the train since I had a pass. I thought my pass granted me the right to be there. As he walked back into the waiting area I approached him and told him I wasn’t going to get on the train. He told me I was being detained for loitering. I asked him what the ordinance is?
The ordinance states if 2 trains pass while someone is waiting they can be cited for loitering whether or not they have a pass since the act demonstrates their intent is not to ride the train. His reasoning for why he could cite was incorrect as he stated you said on camera you weren’t going to catch the next train. It doesn’t matter if I say I’m going to violate an ordinance I have to violate the ordinance through an act otherwise the act of stating I’m going to violate the ordinance doesn’t constitute a violation. However, I was still in violation since I could presumably be shown to have been waiting at the stop for more than 2 trains.
This occurred at about 5pm on Wednesday where the last real sleep I had ended Monday morning at about 6:30am. I’m about 60 hours without sleep minus maybe 3 very low quality hours when I would actually be sleeping over the last few days. Later that evening I had another incident on the train where I considered myself to be the asshole for how I approached it. It was near the end of the night for train service. Blue line leaving the international border I was the only one on the train and one person entered the train. They must have had a video game hooked up to a portable speaker. It sounded like Golden Axe and was extremely loud. After a few minutes I said you want to cut that mother fucking noise down? The person did. I immediately realized I probably could have achieved the same result with a less aggressive approach, but heading into hour 70 without any rem sleep will do that to you.
Jammal came over by me a little bit later. He was at the Neil Center earlier in the day. He was being interviewed for his intake and the staff said “don’t tell me to shut the fuck up”. It was puzzling because Jammal was just standing there, calm, not looking like he had told anyone to shut the fuck up. When we were talking he said the sound of her voice was irritating him and he did tell her to shut the fuck up. He had a cigarette he shared with me and another person who came over to us. I gave him some men’s daily gummy vitamins.
Thursday, November 12th, 2020
I took a shower at Father Joe’s and I went to Neil center where I learned that if you’re there in the morning at 8am there is the potential to get a shelter bed.
I received the call from human services on schedule. I had to send a picture of my ID and a screen shot of the charges I still have warrants for in Wisconsin. Shortly after she called me to tell me she was approving my EBT and I could pick up my card at human services anytime before 3pm.
I went to human services and after seeing the woman at the desk I was given a ticket and had to wait until the card was completed and my number was called. While I was waiting there was a woman in a wheelchair with a dog who was crying. On a previous occasion I offered to push her in the line but she declined the assistance. Another woman who I exchanged a few words with knew her and talked to her. She said people were following her. It was likely a figment of her imagination, but after saying it was someone who was across the street her friend went over and talked to the person who the woman in the chair said was following her. When the woman walked past me I told her I like that in you that was some stand up shit. She smiled and said thanks. Even if the man across the street probably wasn’t following the woman in the chair, seeing him confronted makes her feel better in showing that someone cares about her and maybe to settle her mind about the perceived stalking.
I spoke with her after that. She brought up a woman who was laying on the sidewalk across the street saying she didn’t understand how a woman can get like they because she had a pussy. I said yeah that definitely has market value, and I think the same thing when I see women holding signs. She asked what I meant? I told her the amount of time invested for the amount of money you get out of doesn’t make sense and she understood that.
She mentioned she was going to go home to cook a fat steak and relax. If I was so inclined I probably could have gone home with her but I’m not parasitic. Had she offered I would have accepted that invitation and smashed whatever was left to smash. I’m sure she had been a prostitute at some point. Pimps, prostitutes, and those who understand morality objectively are among those who take the positions that we took. Taking the position that if a woman has nothing else, she can make money selling signs, making more sense than sleeping on the streets or panhandling.
After I obtained my EBT card I went to 11th and C street to go to a dispensary. There was man walking and another man ran up behind him and lunged towards him yelling. Then again I don’t know if they got a history with one another that caused him to do that. Then near the other side of the street he did it from the front to a woman. There was a member of the transit police who witnessed the act and she didn’t say shit. When I brought it up to her she said that outside of the stop wasn’t her jurisdiction, and I imagine she isn’t trying to do anything for the probably $15 to $20 an hour she’s making.
I yelled this an example of money in politics. (In that private security on transit serves the private interest to make money, but not the public interest of providing security) A clear example of a private interest influencing public policy to serve its interest over the interest of the public. We don’t have to pay police officer wages to have a public security force operating as a branch of the police with San Diego city jurisdiction who focuses on transit enforcement. This could have the added benefit of serving as a training ground for new police officers as opposed to putting people out into the field who have no experience.
You cannot provide a service and make a profit for less than it costs to provide the service without the profit, unless you’re squeezing your profit out of labor, and even then that model could be mirrored in a non-profit environment. In paying private security to protect a public asset you’re paying more for less security. If transit enforcement was done by an agency under law enforcement they would have jurisdiction to secure the surrounding area. You’re also ensuring that the men and women who do an excellent job of transit enforcement are paid less than they should be,(1) and trapped with little opportunity for advancement if they stay with the company. I presume the business model is sustainable, and that means there is room for the transit enforcement to get paid, and for the public to pay less for more security. I’m sure the company is very supportive of the politicians and the one private citizen who serves on the MTS board.
1: They did a good job in enforcement, were very respectful, informative, and professional. A little too professional sometimes. The day after I was told about the ordinance stating that if a person is waiting for the trains and two of the same trains pass I asked a pair of transit enforcement officers if this was true. I was told it was. Just fucking around making conversation, I asked what if I left after the second train passed, and then came back. One of the officers laughed and the other one stayed in officer mode and told me he would tell the person to leave the area, catch the next train, or cite them for loitering because they’ve shown no intent to get on the train. That seems correct barring any extenuating circumstances for the behavior.
I’m on the green line on my way to buy a cartridge and at a stop this dude yells a bunch of shit through the back door and pulls the cover on what I thought was a fire alarm, (2) I’m trying to get some real thc in my life for about the first time in 5 sleepless and stress filled days. Everybody else on the train including the 100 lb blond chic who was standing in front of him also had some place to go. I was closest. I jumped from my seat and rushed him intending to punch him. When I got up and moved towards him and said something along the lines of what’s your problem he backed up real quick.
2: I found out later that the lever was actually an emergency door release not a fire alarm but the consequence would presumably been the same delaying me and the rest of the passengers.
–
I’m trying to sleep on the train and there was someone on the other end yelling loud talking very aggressively. The train reached its final stop and everyone got off except for me and him. I didn’t have my contacts in so I couldn’t see. At that time I was so tired I wasn’t even thinking too much about it. I put on my shoes expecting to fight him. This wasn’t just because he was doing this and I was trying to sleep, it was because I felt it was intended specifically to not let me sleep. It wasn’t something that was just happening and I happened to be on the car I was on. As I finished putting my second shoe on two transit officers came on the train and removed him from the bus. Without force.
The train starts back up and the lady who appears crazy sits down in the seat in front of me or the seats in front of those seats. She starts banging a plastic bottle on the rails, like she’s practicing a drum solo. I put my shoes on, I get up and get off at the next stop and hop back on the next car.
I listen to her sometimes when she talks to herself and as those things go she isn’t that bad. Her stories make sense regardless of whether they’re true or not. Her C&E assignments to objects are still functional, even if the stories are based on some misinterpretation of fact. This is based off of a few clips I’ve heard, one of which had to do with a man but she paid all the bills and what she said after that made sense with that which I’ve paraphrased.
Like many of them she needs attention and opportunity. How are you going to tell someone about needing to address their mental condition or drug dependency and expect them to take it seriously when they’re sleeping on the fucking street? When their whole day even if they did have opportunity revolves around trying to maintain basic necessities in their life? I also heard her say therapy was a crock of shit. I think she’s right based on some very casual distant impressions from therapy, but also the results I see and inconsistencies in people who have been through therapy. The point is I would have liked to talk to her but she’s yelling shit that made it difficult to talk to her.
The train I was on stopped suddenly and I had to find my way outside of the train station and take a bus downtown. The bus put me near City College Station and I needed to go to Santa Fe to wait for the greenline to start running. I got on a train at City College Station.
There was a large man in the back talking loud to himself. He smacked his face and said “she smacked me in the face”. I understood that he was not part of the shenanigans, he was just in his mind speaking out loud. We had a conversation and I don’t know if it began with me speaking with him or him speaking with me. I wish I remembered the whole conversation. He asked me if I had a GED. I told him yes, in the house of corrections in 2000. Then I realized I shouldn’t have introduced those objects to him for which he has no point of reference. There were other situations when I did better. He mentions an object and he knows what that object is, and I associate other objects with it, which builds his understanding. He asked me if I ever got a detention in school. I said I think everyone has probably got a detention. I don’t remember the other parts of the conversation and there were not many more, but it reminded me of how I would talk to some people in San Francisco. They may say something that doesn’t make sense or that is just off and I wouldn’t try to respond to the whole assertion or dissect and refute it, I would take something in what was said and say something about it. Wherever the conversation would go I’d follow it where they took it and steer it towards things they could understand and steer it towards sense. When I got off the train he threw up a peace sign to me. That felt good especially after the night and week. I was happy to know that someone who probably doesn’t have a whole lot of conversations like that felt good because of my attention. I needed that shit.
A man came up to me while I was standing near the last stop for the blue line across the street from Santa Fe Station. He asked me if I saw a guy come through on a scooter. I told him yeah about 10 minutes earlier but he was moving pretty fast. He must have been doing about 20mph on it. He introduced himself as Richie. He told me had $16,000 but didn’t want to claim it because he makes bad decisions. I figured he was full of shit.
There were two points I didn’t make about him saying he needed to make better choices. The first is that most of his choices are based on his present circumstances, where he has opportunities to make better choices with $16000 than he does with whatever money he’s presently making that goes into probably whatever drug makes him feel good. Second, in order to make better choices you need different anchoring values and perhaps new values. If he’s smoking hard he has to have something that makes him feel better than smoking rocks that smoking rocks interferes with. If he doesn’t have anything he likes better than that why wouldn’t he continue to smoke? And if smoking doesn’t interfere with whatever it is that he values more, why would he stop smoking? Most of what people say is more important to them isn’t actually important to them, it’s perceived as being popularly important, so people say they want to quit using drugs because x y and z is important. Then they keep on doing drugs because that feeling is greater than the feelings they derive from x y and z.
Friday, November 13th, 2020
I went to the Neil Center, very tired, now on 96 hours with a few hours of shitty sleep, (although on Thursday I did sleep better for about an hour where I was completely out). The first half was eerily quiet and I had the cartridge I smoked that relaxed my body, but I was still very tired when I showed up at the Neil Center some time before 7. I was going to get there at 4 to make sure I was the first person in line for the shelter but the green line going in that direction would be the first one that came so I decided to catch it to try to get another hour of sleep in. The security guard with the beard who does his job extremely well, with the right mix of being casual, helpful, and seemingly genuine in concern and compassion for the people he’s dealing with told me I can go in and come out at about 7:30 or 7:45. I just wanted to know where to stand so I said so I should be right here right now? He said “you should be”, and that’s where I was at and I was the first one on the list. I was very disappointed when she said there were no shelter beds.
Subaru donated blankets and the Neil Center distributed them. I decided to take the Subaru blanket and go to the park I was at on my second day in San Diego. It was a relaxed park in a hispanic neighborhood and when I was there the first time people were laying out on the grass and on the bleachers. I mention it was a hispanic neighborhood because other than the south side of Milwaukee, most hispanic neighborhoods in my experience are smooth.
I went to the bus stop on I think 16th and market to catch the 3 to the park. While I was waiting a woman was revving her engine and then the car was lurching forward. At first it seemed like she was holding the break and revving the engine and then stepping on the brake. Then she was revving the engine and the car wasn’t moving. I thought her transmission wouldn’t go into gear. I asked her if she wanted me to push her across the intersection so she could park the car on the side of the road. She made some response in the affirmative. I pushed her across the street or nearly across the street while I watched my bags. When she was nearly across the intersection that we were blocking off during the opposite traffic’s greenlight she put the car in gear and sped off.
I was sitting down on 12th and Imperial and a man with college flyers in his hand approached me and asked if I was interested in a job in fiber optics. I’m somewhat familiar with the work having worked at a home depot (through another company) for two weeks and there were guys doing the work that this work sounded like it consisted of. I told him I was interested. He asked for a number to give to his boss and told me his boss would call me on Monday. I never received that call but at the time it was a good prospect.
I needed to finish up the new version of SCA I was working on and I couldn’ do it without sleep. I remembered I saw an ad offering rooms for about $45 and I decided I needed to spend that to get the sleep to finish and submit the advancements I’d made in SCA.
I was waiting for the orange line at City College Station and Ritchie came up to me and told me he might have a job for me at the laundry for 13 an hour. I told him I just received another offer but if that didn’t pan out I’d work in the laundry. I performed “shit shaking” in the house of corrections, where we separated shitty mental health care clothing, so I could do whatever laundry they had. I also ran the dryer which was an industrial dryer. I had to be brief because the orange line was coming that I needed to catch to get to that hotel and I did not want to lose time in that mfer.
On my GPS it showed the cross streets that she gave me were fairly close to the orange line. So I decided to walk. I came to an intersection where there were 2 lanes of cars turning right. The light turned green and I began to walk across and the first car had to stop after he was ready to make that turn, and then there was a second lane of cars and he had to stop. One of these mfers had an intercom hooked up to their car. They said thanks for waiting, asshole. I was tired retorted with uncharacteristicly soft enthusiasm lacking fuck you. He was clearly wrong, pedestrians have the right away especially on a green light. Him and the other cars are the ones who needed to wait.
I head across the next street and this time I have a walk sign. This bitch speeds around the corner and almost hits me. I yell what the fuck are you doing bitch? I’m pretty sure she said she was sorry.
I’m right around the corner from Kenwood drive and Campo. There was nothing there. I called the hotel and the woman told me I had to go down further. I walked to the next light. I went to an atm because I wanted to pay in cash. Then I took the bus the rest of the way. The issue was there are two Kenwood drives on Campo, one is a small residential three way and the other is a large intersection.
The room was decent and I felt good the following day.
Saturday, November 14th, 2020
During my time in San Diego I was asked frequently for cigarettes and a few times for money. Under most circumstances when I have money coming in I don’t mind sparing a dollar here or there. The feeling of helping somebody exceeds the feeling that could be gained from the substance sacrificed. However, when I don’t have an income it adds up so I didn’t give too much of shit to people in San Diego, unless of course it was someone I was in conversation with, then I’d look out especially since they’d typically look out for me with a hit of weed or something along those lines.
After sleeping I remembered when I left the airport there was a food court that was pretty much empty and seemingly no one was checking to see who was supposed to be there and who was not. I stopped at a Burger King and used my EBT to get the 2 for 6 whoppers but the seating area was closed. I went down the block and was eating my whoppers. An old homeless man came by and asked if I had some change he could get something to eat with. I told him I bought these with EBT. Then I offered him the rest of my first whopper that I only took a few bites out of and he accepted it.
I went to the airport, finished SCA and submitted it to the Cognition Journal.
After finishing SCA I went back to Sante Fe Station. While I was waiting this dude who said he went by bear tried selling me some jewelry. I declined but he struck up a conversation with me and smoked some weed with me. I gave him a water. He had just came into some merchandise he was trying to sell and told me how he got it. I told him he better not be telling people that shit or he’s going to get caught. It was really stupid for him to tell me because he doesn’t know anything about me, I could have been the police.
I’m laying down on the train and this dude gets on the train and periodically beats on his seat. I say hey man, you need to keep beating on the chair like that? He said I’m beating to my music. I say something else to him and he says why don’t you sleep at home? (I should have asked him why he didn’t beat to his music in his car) I told him because I don’t have a home. I tell him you beat on the chair just because you see me trying to sleep, you spend your life trying to fuck with people because you’re a bitch in life. He said he was an asshole. I wanted to whoop his ass so bad. I get up and stand a few feet from him. I was thinking about hitting him but not too seriously. I was waiting to get off the car even though he didn’t hit the chair again after I addressed him. He was scared and said what’s up to his guy across the train, as if I was going to hit him, him knowing someone on the train would deter me. I didn’t have my contacts in so I couldn’t see his guy real well, but by the time his guy would have got there he’d have been starched and it would have been me versus his guy and that’s probably much too tall an order for the outline of the person I saw. It was after this that I knew I had to leave San Diego, otherwise I don’t see any way with the way people were playing that I didn’t catch a battery case.
Now I am in Vegas. Sunday morning I found someone who was willing to rent me a space for $300 a month. Then I found a plane ticket for 49 dollars to Las Vegas that ended up being about 90 dollars with a checked bag and tax. In less than 24 hours I found a day labor service I’m going to begin working at tomorrow, and a moving job I should be starting this weekend. The moving job is for a foreman position. I talked to the owner today who knows I know the business and will likely hire me as a foreman after having a chance to see me work.
11/2020 Vegas 1st 10 Days
I arrived in Las Vegas in the early afternoon after about a 1 hour flight from San Diego. I retrieved my checked bag and contacted the person who agreed to rent me the room who provided me the address to the apartment. I put the address in the GPS and exited the terminal. There was no bus stop at the location where I exited. I went back to the terminal and there were signs that pointed to the second level for public transportation but when I went to the second level none of the headers on the exits read public transportation.
Eventually I asked a woman working there how to get to the bus stop. She was really cool, went above and beyond taking me to the area to catch the transport to the next terminal to catch the bus I was waiting for. When I reached the bus stop I was looking at the machine to purchase bus fare. I was approached by two people who told me it was cheaper to buy a pass on the bus. The machine was charging 8 dollars for 2 hours, and the bus offered 24 hour passes for 5 dollars. In my first hour in Vegas people were helpful.
I had suspicions about the room I was renting. It was very cheap and very easy to get. I imagined a number of scenarios that included being intercepted and robbed, having a person use another person’s apartment, taking my money and later the tenant says they don’t know who the person that rented me the room but they don’t live here, among other things. As I rode the terminal bus to the next terminal I felt that it was more likely than not my living arrangement was some kind of setup. But I was here with about $550 and I was not going to find anything for $300 a month. I proceeded against my suspicions, none of which have materialized and seem unlikely to.
The following day I went to a day labor service about two blocks from where I’m renting a room. I filled out an application and the woman told me to be there tomorrow at 5:30am and she should be able to find me work.
Next I went to a moving company who was hiring drivers. The owner explained that he was looking for people who could take trips to do pickups. I explained my experience interstate moving and he understood that I knew what I was talking about. His pay system wasn’t very good. He paid foreman 160 dollars per day at a flat rate with incentives where they could earn about 180 dollars per day. It wasn’t commission based but I was still interested since I needed steady work and $160 per day probably exceeds what I’d make doing anything else. He told me he had local work that weekend and he would try me out.
The next day I went to the day labor service provider at 5:30am. The woman who knew the day before I didn’t have a car told me the only work she had was off the bus line. I felt great the day before thinking I secured a job moving and having the day labor service where each day I could at least earn some money. By early afternoon I already felt the urgency to find ways to make money. I also went to another day labor service about a mile away but it was closed down.
Either mid afternoon this day or it may have been the next day I received a text from a contractor who was looking for assistance either that afternoon or the following day. I told him I was ready now and he picked me up within about an hour.
I staged block to add courses to an existing block wall, and stripped glue off of a concrete floor in preparation for tile. In the truck on the way to the job he told me he can pay me at the end of the day for the first few days but he usually likes to wait a few days in between payments because in his experience people don’t show up to work after they’re paid. I figured I’d let him see the way I work and my general reliability and then I would tell him I need to be paid daily. This isn’t because I need the money to spend, but working through craigslist it is expected because I could work 4 days and then he doesn’t pick me up and I have no way to collect from him. On the 1st day he paid me $100 for 6 hours of work which was a $10 bonus on our agreement since I agreed to work for $15 an hour.
The second day we worked 11 hours. As he drove me to the drop off point he asked if I needed any money. I said I need payment for the 11 hours of labor I performed. He said he told me he couldn’t pay me everyday and I brought to his attention that he said he would pay me everyday for the first two days. I explained to him that I needed to be paid daily. He paid me and told me we would get started the following day around 8am.
The previous day we were supposed to start at 7:30 and he didn’t show up until nearly 8am. The third morning I called at 7:30 and received no answer. Then I texted. I called him again at 8:15am, he answered and told me work was canceled for the day because the homeowner was having people over. There was at least another week worth of work here. Later I texted him and asked if he knew if he needed me for the following day or if I should try to schedule other work. He said he didn’t know what was going on and if I can schedule other work I should do that. I didn’t hear from him again. I think if I’d have accepted deferred payment terms he would have allowed me to continue working, but I also believe he would have tried to get as many days worth of labor out of me as he could, and then disappear.
My day consists primarily of going back and forth between the craigslist gigs and jobs sections. I also have a general labor ad. I found another job where the contractor was non-specific about the pay and then was not at the site when I arrived. The homeowner came out and I told him I was standing in front of his house waiting for the contractor.
The contractor texted me the homeowner is going to tell me what to do to get started. I went to the door to ask the homeowner what we were doing but he didn’t come out. I text him that the homeowner came out but went back in.
He texts Walk up to the house!
If he thinks he is going to be yelling commands that I’m going to be obediently and submissively following he misunderstands the nature of our exchange, where I’m not an employee of his but a service provider to facilitate his ends with my labor.
I texted him back, Yeah, I did that, knocked on the door and he didn’t come back out!
He texts. Ok, I’m almost there just wait.
Home owner came out and I relayed to him what was told to me that he was supposed to show me what they had going on. He brought me to a dirt area that had some roots. He explained they were pulling out the roots and spraying the ones that couldn’t be pulled out with roundup. It seemed like a pretty simple job. The work was in preparation for installing astroturf so I presumed we deweed the area, and then I was going to bring the gravel from the front and fill in that area and the astro turf was going to be installed over the gravel.
I was upset about how the contractor texted me, and not only in a way that came across as him yelling at me but also the implications of the text that I was expected to be doing something that there should have been no expectation of me doing, despite having done that thing already. I’ve never worked with this guy before, he isn’t at the job site when I arrive, he thinks he can yell at me (in person I’d have told him about himself), and now he expects me to begin working on his job before he arrives for a non-specific amount of pay.
When I asked what the pay was before going to the job he said don’t worry I’ll hook you up. I decided not to press the issue at that time because I wanted to make some money instead of no money.
I walked off the job and called the contractor who did not pick up. I sent him the text Have your shit together, tell people what the pay is, and be at the site when it’s time to work. I’m out.
It was disappointing to miss whatever money I missed but my dignity is worth more than whatever the hook up was.
The next job I found was two days before Thanksgiving washing windows.
In these first 10 days I’ve only found work 3 days and made $385. For whatever reason the moving company did not call me back. I think part of the reason may have been he suspected me of being under cover DOT because of how candid I was about my previous experience. I talked about tactics used to boost the revised estimate that were employed in my previous experience. While the tactics expected from my previous employer in interstate moving were deceptive, they were necessary to make sure everyone had an opportunity to make real money as opposed to other companies that may have been more honest with customers but paid their employees like shit.
There was one job he did that stands out to me which was particularly unethical and funny. There was a large move that was probably about 2800 cubic feet. The owner closed this job. I delivered half of it which is why I know the story and he told me about it. A 26ft box truck has 1750 cubic feet of storage. He told the owner that the box truck is 2000 cubic feet which isn’t too bad. He quoted the job for 4000 cubic feet for two box trucks and then charged a high fee for guaranteed day of delivery. What he did next was what was funny.
They loaded the truck a little less than half way. Half way through he had one of his guys make wardrobe boxes and add layers of empty wardrobe boxes to take up more space so he could show the customer that two trucks were full. Exaggerating space was common, and on smaller jobs if they had 300cf you tell them they have 600cf and they typically don’t know. Even if they haven’t added any items you tell them it isn’t what the items are its how they can be stacked and so on and so forth. But outside of this, I never heard of adding a 1000cf by using empty wardrobe boxes. That was funny to me.
Another tactic used was lowering the pre pickup weight of the truck. Some foreman would leave part of one of the tires off of the scale when they weighed the truck empty which decreases the weight. Then after you load the customers items when you have the truck all the way on the scale you get an extra few hundred to 1000 pounds or more. I was almost caught doing this by a person who used to be a truck driver and knew the game. I weighed the truck before I got to the pick up and gave the customer the weight. I added probably an extra 1000 lbs. However, on the delivery because this was one of the few jobs I delivered myself the guy wanted to be present to weigh the truck after I unloaded. I told him I was in a hurry and would only charge him the original estimate and he accepted this concession.
These were some of the things I discussed with the owner and I think discussing these things with him made it seem like I was trying to get him to admit to these practices and caused him to believe I may have been undercover DOT. I was just trying to express that I was experienced.
On Thanksgiving Day there was an opportunity to hold a place in line outside of a Gamestop. The deal was if I’m 1st or 2nd in line he’ll pay me $100 at 6:30 am the day after Thanksgiving. I arrived at the first game stop at 5:40. There was 1 person waiting in line and three chairs. I made it a point to tell him that I’m second in line, because in order to be waiting in line it requires that a person occupy the space with their physical presence. We came into that understanding and he agreed after some resistance that a person needs to be present to be considered as being in line. I snapped a photo and contacted the person who was retaining my services.
I asked the man in line if he was waiting for a PS5. He told me this store only had the XBox Series X. It was listed on the door that this GameStop only had 8 XBox Series X and no PS5s. I called the person who retained my services and he told me he was only interested in a PS5.
I went to a second game stop and there were already at least 4 people in line and only 2 PS5s at this location.
I decided to try one more location on my way home. There’s 2 groups of people in cars with chairs sitting outside. I exchange words with one of the people in the car and he accuses me of trying to bully them out of their spot. He knows his physical presence is required to be considered as being in line. I know he knows this because he tries to say the people in the store told him they had to wait in their cars because of covid, which is of course a lie because the store wasn’t open.
I took a picture of the empty chairs and a picture of myself in front of the store. Unfortunately the person who I was holding the spot for didn’t want the spot under those conditions. I didn’t want to wait there all night and not be paid. Had it been me trying to buy a ps5 I’m confident gamestop would have agreed that being in line requires your physical presence. I should have told the guy to give me the money and I’ll get him the ps5 but I didn’t think of it until after I left.
I don’t have the photo I snapped that night but I do still have the photo of my turkey. I read a bunch of articles about not basting your turkey and I took that personal. This is what you get when you baste.
Vegas Extras
The day after Thanksgiving it is 4:21 and I have not found a job for today or tomorrow. This is a problem for me.
I was stressed in San Diego because I was prevented from sleeping and could not find shelter so I couldn’t do much of anything else.
I’ve been stressed in Las Vegas because I cannot find steady work. Today the shittiest job I applied for, for 10 mother fucking dollars per hour left me a message while I was filling out another job application and provided me with my choice of 3 different shifts on the message.
I don’t know what I was thinking coming to the West Coast. I was thinking of warmth, and I remembered how easy it was to get into a shelter in San Francisco, and figured it would be easy to get into a shelter in San Diego. I don’t want to be in a blue state. The people are typically much stupider than the people in red states. It reflects in laws, what people value, in the case of covid it reflects in restrictions and the degree of restrictions which has economic consequences that affects the ratio of jobs to job seekers, and this impacts my interests. When I’m talking about what people value, this also directly impacts my interest. Companies in these states typically don’t care if you’re honest, intelligent, reliable, and capable of doing the job because they don’t value ability and integrity, they value obedience and would prefer that you lie to them as an exercise in obedience.
The fork is what am I going to do tomorrow? Am I going to call the company that called me today and perform some menial task for what will probably amount to 10.5 hours out of every day for $65, or am I going to say fuck it? 10.5 hours a day is presuming an hour bus ride there, an hour bus ride back, and a half hour lunch. $65 is 8 hour days at $10 an hour, minus $5 a day for the bus pass, and $10 for taxes. If I have no expenses in two weeks I’ll have about $650! I will have expenses, probably in the neighborhood of about $200 which is roughly $15 per day. In two weeks time, 5 days per week, 10.5 hours per day, 105 hours if I manage to maintain strict discipline on spending which I probably won’t because I’m going to hate the job and resent the fact that the work I should be doing is neglected, I’ll save $450.
Most people should be wondering why doesn’t this guy just kill himself. LOL. Seriously, why continue to contend with this self deceiving shit fucking species where you have no opportunities and there is very little chance that your situation is ever going to improve? You’re 38 years old, you have nothing, you’re trying rent rooms from people well below market value and your only opportunity for income are shit jobs, while the important things you have to contribute cannot receive attention because 1: you lack the money and the opportunities to get the money to draw attention to them, and 2: because you’re talking about truth which offends all biases, and people prefer the reality that gives them joy, not the reality that is.
It’s interesting. Maybe about 6 months ago, I wrote down the things that provided me joy, the emotional upkeep that allowed me to continue within the circumstances that I was trapped in. Among those things was marijuana, exercise, writing, and social media exchanges. I stopped smoking marijuana, stopped exercising, stopped writing and stopped participating in social media exchanges.
Within about a day or two, I was in the garage with my car running. My mother’s daughter heard the car running and banged the garage door and said she was going to call the fire department. Later I gathered my items and put them in my car. This was in the event that I changed my mind concerning what I intended to do I would at least have my possessions. I grabbed a plastic hose. I don’t remember what the original purpose of purchase was, but I was going to run it from the tailpipe into my vehicle and take that last nap.
Mood consists of perception of your environment, that produces thoughts, and what you’re thinking produces feelings, and then those feelings influence your thoughts, as well as color your perception. Without the feelings produced through exercise, writing, social media exchanges, and marijuana, my thoughts are a sober cyclical analysis of my circumstances, produced by my subconscious in an effort to find a way through these circumstances to accomplish my objectives and achieve the anticipated positive feelings. These thoughts produce stress in the acknowledgement of how trapped I am, and more so in Wisconsin where I have warrants for misdemeanor offenses that are only statewide enforceable. In the absence of the activities that produce positive feelings that create irrational hope and confidence the only thing that makes sense is killing yourself. For me the only emotions present at that time was anger. There’s no loneliness, why me, or sadness present, just frustration with the situation I find myself in.
Holly knew what my intentions were. As I was about to cross the WI/IL border I received a call from the West Allis Police Department. Holly called the police and told them I intended to induce carbon monoxide poisoning. It didn’t matter. I didn’t have much money at that time and I wanted to go out on a full stomach and with some tobacco. I stopped at a Walmart and cashed in change I had been saving. My car was running very poorly and this was likely due to all the trips I made to Florida going to court and the performance had been deteriorating since my last trip. I stopped at another Walmart in Northlake, IL. I planned on going to a rest area near I80 and I was likely going to take that nap at that location. Before I had the chance I was pulled over by at least 3 Northlake police, maybe more with at least 4 and maybe 5 officers present.
They told me I wasn’t in any trouble but they received a call that I planned on hurting myself. I denied the allegation and my denial was rather convincing. They called an ambulance. I talked to the paramedics and one of the officers came in the ambulance and I talked to him. Everyone seemed pretty convinced that this was a girlfriend that was overly concerned and reading things into me leaving abruptly. That’s until the officer received the details of what she said and this included the hose. The officer asked me if I would take a ride to the hospital to talk with the staff at the hospital. He told me they’ll leave my car parked where it is, and he gave me a card I could call if I wanted a ride back to my car. The hose was in plain sight in the back of my vehicle. If I refuse they’re probably going to check for the hose and if they find the hose I have no explanation as to why I have this plastic hose with me. So I agreed.
At the hospital I had difficulties explaining the situation. Eventually it came to the point where I admitted that I said I was going to use carbon monoxide to harm myself but I told them my intentions where to provoke a response in Holly. When asked how, I told them in the garage which I had actually already begun before I was interrupted and feared the police would come before I would finish and I would go to jail. The hospital didn’t know I had the hose and they released me since I didn’t have a garage to follow through with the act.
The general interaction and 3 mile walk back to my vehicle changed my mood enough where I decided to postpone the idea and returned home with my vehicle in terrible condition.
The difference between then and now is how much progress I’ve made with Sequencing, Comparison, and Assignment, among other things. If SCA is a pie, 6 months ago I had maybe 6 out of 10 pieces which is enough to understand a lot, whereas today I have 9.5 pieces. Not to mention other new material, applications, ideas, functions, and solutions to problems. It’s very difficult for me to kill myself having built myself up as far as I have, even being ignored, unacknowledged, and not understood. Socially I’m pretty fucked too. This comes from the interaction offered by most adults being the equivalent of most adults interacting with 5 years olds. That’s a little difficult to understand, but what I’m saying is, the depth of adults interacting with 5 years olds, is how it is for me to interact with most adults.
So what do I want to do? If you had any idea where I’ve been for the last 5 years you would know difficult situations are not new to me. Each time I build myself back up just have some bullshit tear it back down. I’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on trying, and I’m not sure I want to. This is what I mean by I can call that job or say fuck it. Say fuck it is I leave where I am and I’m just going to be where I’m going to be. I don’t know what that means either, but it mean fuck this world, and I’m pretty sure I’m right about the existential implications of liberty as the basis which is undeniably true. After a while maybe I get back to taking myself out of this shit or something takes me out of this shit. It’s just awfully difficult to want to dedicate my time to bullshit work making $10 an hour. At most I have until January 16th to get myself together and get a car. This job I think only lasts about 20 days.
We’ll see what I feel like tomorrow.
11/29/2020 Reflections
I took a day to relax somewhat. I was still looking for work and took part in a phone interview but also watched a movie “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”, and then watched the Tyson Jones fight. The Good the Bad and the Ugly is my favorite movie. The characters are consistent and believable, the story expresses morality of circumstances, relationships based on interests, has a happy ending, and is entertaining and humorous in the action and the dialogue. At some point I may do a more indepth review of the movie scene by scene.
The Tyson Jones fight was lackluster but still entertaining. Tyson landed a few hard body shots, Jones had one round where he hit Tyson with a flurry but most of the fight was Tyson swinging and Jones holding him.
In usual West Coast fashion the event was used to fuel the racial divide and project race as a source of disadvantage. Weedmaps associated it’s brand with the fake social justice fervor in this country by announcing it’s support for those who fight against inequality while flashing images of protestors. LL Cool J talked about how one of his ancestors was a slave who fought for his freedom. He went on to talk about how fighters like Mike Tyson are inspirational, showing that black people who begin in disadvantaged circumstances can overcome, an example of the American Dream. Very nonsensical in the sense that for every 1 Mike Tyson who is able to accomplish something amazing, there are millions of others who begin from those circumstances and end up with drug dependencies that they use to cope with disadvantaged circumstances, who are incarcerated, never realize a comfortable income, or who die prematurely because of a high risk lifestyle. It’s called the trap because poverty is typically a catch 22. If you don’t take risks you’ll never be free. Most of your time will be spent working a low wage job that barely meets your expenses and if you take risks, these risks often lead to incarceration or death. “Life in the belly of the beast is equal to poverty’s bottomless pit”.
None of this is relevant to the struggle that people of color face in this country. Class is the greatest source of disadvantage in this country. Race is not a source of disadvantage, where those born into a minority race face no disadvantages if they are born into money. All statistics that suggest race is a source of disadvantage represent the disproportionate amount of people of color who begin from financially disadvantaged circumstances. Although a greater proportion of people of color begin from disadvantaged circumstances, there are more than twice as many white people who are poor than there are minorities who are poor in whole numbers. There’s definitely a case to be made that being poor and white is more difficult than being a poor minority, since race is promoted as a source of disadvantage and so racial minorities receive special treatment while poor white people exist almost as a myth, with no advocacy groups, and no one substantially acknowledging their existence or the cycle that produces their condition. While still being accused of white privilege, often by those who are advantage comparitively.
Industry supports ideas that race is a source of disadvantage because the narrative exists and it boosts their brand appeal without compromising their interests. Class cannot be an interest promoted by industry because class based objectives undermine the interests of industry. The more opportunities the underclasses have for income and wealth the more influential they become in influencing public policy and the less reliant they are on industry for employment opportunities. Race is the greatest tool of wealth and industry to ensure the underclasses remain divided to perpetuate the present power structure which benefits wealth and industry. All of this is confirmed by the evidence chronicled in articles on my website but people are not interested in the substance of the issue, they’re interested in adopting the platform of the group to add meaning to their meaningless lives, social inclusion, and other feelings derived from ideas of justice.
Most of my stress and discontent right now stems from me being unable to find sustained work, and much of this has to do with the exaggerated danger of Covid-19, which has been exaggerated to serve the interests of industry as some sectors of the economy are benefiting greatly from restrictions and the manufactured perception of the virus. The 1905 ruling Jacobson v. Massachusetts states a community has the right to defend itself against epidemic of disease that endangers the safety of its members. This case involved small pox which has a 30% general mortality rate and can be considered randomly deadly. By contrast Covid-19 kills only weakest segments of the population, as Uros Seljak of Berkeley concluded if you want to know what your risk of dying of covid-19 is, it’s about the same as your chances of dying of natural causes in the next 12 months. Roughly 1.75 million people die each year of natural causes which represents .5% of the population. A virus that cannot kill 99.5% of the population cannot be considered a danger to public safety since the consequence of being infected is sickness and recovery. This is supported by CDC data where 94% of all fatalities were people with serious underlying medical conditions with an average of 2.5 conditions present per fatality. This conclusion is reinforced by a CDC study that showed that of those people hospitalized with covid who have underlying medical conditions, 93.5% survived, meaning only “the weakest segments of the population are at risk of death”, where even the presence of underlying medical conditions does not substantially increase your risk of death. The scamdemic serves important interests, both for those who are for restrictions and those who are against restrictions. People go back and forth between bullshit narratives about mask effectiveness, their rights, and whatever other developments are put there to engage the public. Meanwhile small businesses are being crushed which will lead to further consolidation of power by industry, fewer opportunities for the public to establish an income, and children who are suffering dramatically due to a lack of opportunities for social interaction because they cannot attend school.
I live among people whose perception of reality is completely subjective. Facts of reality are chosen based on how those facts reinforce their perception of the world to maintain their biases. How many times have I written this? It’s difficult to write anything that doesn’t lead to bringing this point up, since self deception is the root of all human problems and the great preventer of communication and liter of intelligence. The issues are now impacting individual interests more than they had in the past.
It seems clear to me that I’m not going to be able to find sustainable work in Vegas. I’m trying to establish shelter, work, and save enough money to buy a car. After this I’m confident I can maintain myself through gig work and begin developing the curriculum for my material and host classes. I cannot concentrate on those things right now because I don’t have enough money to meet my expenses for the foreseeable future. I have my sights set on a red state where the covid 19 restrictions and general delusions implanted by democrats are less restrictive and prevalent. Everyone is so invested in the scamdemic it is difficult to imagine the truth ever coming out about this. It will end on vaccination, and eventually there will be papers published about how the danger was overstated that will go unacknowledged by the media and general public. The narrative of popular history will be about the great sacrifices made to eradicate covid, when the truth is, that everything that has been endured and the damage caused by restrictions was the result of exaggerated danger to serve the interests of wealth, industry, and the political power they are represented by.
If there were other intelligent life in the universe capable of interstellar travel and able to observe human beings without being detected it isn’t difficult to understand why they wouldn’t make contact. First, any species that exists long enough to develop interstellar travel is going to understand liberty as the basis for objective morality as a parameter of motion. This is the prime directive of the Star Trek moral equivalent. No species would interact with another species that hasn’t reached this conclusion and applied it to reflect in its systems and institutions. Each intelligent species has a choice individually and collectively to be a species of liberty or a species of tyranny, where the latter will eventually destroy itself. 1st an alien species would not impose on the free will of the species to choose liberty or tyranny. 2nd, an alien species would not want to empower a tyrannical species with technology and other advantages that would allow that species to impose on other species outside of its solar system. 3rd and the reason I brought this up, an alien species could not change the morality of the species even if it wanted to.
The reason I mention this is for the 3rd explanation as to why an alien species would not make contact with human beings. Human beings are so self deceptive and biased they cannot be persuaded by facts and reasoning, no matter how consistent it is. They will hide from and ignore whatever challenges their biases, because their biases that rely on their perception of the world maintains the joy they experience from known objects. I’m sitting on discoveries, explanations of motion, and remedies for major human problems and they go unacknowledged because they offend all biases.
While I’m confined to these horrible circumstances, where my ideas and material goes unacknowledged, and where I am unable to sustain myself, my silver lining is the existence of conscious beings being confined to their chosen moral order based on the presumption that consciousness survives death, which to me is more likely than not.
Liberty as the basis for objective morality understands morality as a determinant of motion in a multi being setting. All beings want to do what they want to do which is based on subjective value. So long as no being imposes on the liberty of any other being all beings are free to do as they please. The alternative is tyranny, where beings impose on one another based on the ability or inability of other beings to impose a consequence for that imposition. We have tyranny on earth, but the universe itself was created in liberty, some conscious being or more likely beings freely created the universe and what develops in the universe is free to choose liberty or tyranny. If consciousness survives death, there is presumably an infinite space of liberty for those who understand liberty and apply, and an infinite space of tyranny for those beings who have chosen and applied tyranny. Such beings cannot exist in the same space because the propensity of the tyrants to impose is at odds with the liberated beings to prevent and remove imposition. If consciousness survives death hell must exist. While human beings project values that are popular that seem good, their morality is still tyrannical, and the advantaged are responsible for their participation, consent, and benefit from systems that trap others. Regardless of being advantaged or disadvantaged, self deception is a form of tyranny in the consequences it has for communication and how it contributes to maintaining tyrannical systems. More concisely, how it indirectly restricts motion.
With this said, in the hell I have experienced on this planet, and being at a place where I’m 38 years old, cannot find work or establish an income, sleeping on an air mattress with few possessions, having made discoveries that if acknowledged would change the trajectory of the human species leading to a more intelligent species, and a freer species through increased and higher quality opportunities for income and time, I am consoled by ideas of eternal hell, and knowing it is the chosen destination of most of the people on this planet.
I don’t know where I’ll be in the next week, month, or if I’ll be anywhere in the next year. While I recognized that what I have endured has led to the discoveries and understanding that has produced my essence that I have so much pride and confidence in, I am at a place now where the continued endurance doesn’t seem to have much value in development. My circumstances exist as they are today only as a hindrance to my objectives. I cannot move forward with anything because I cannot promote and advance material when I do not have the resources necessary to sustain even my natural needs, much less the resources required to advance my material. I don’t have control over the establishment of an income. I don’t have the money to establish an income and I cannot force anyone to retain my services even in a labor capacity.
This moves me into the territory of having to take serious risks to make money. My background was hustling, buying whatever I could buy typically drugs and reselling them to earn money. In the last 4 years or so I’ve worked manual labor jobs having abandoned that lifestyle back in 2014. Theft and robbery was not something I engaged in, although I was well acquainted with many people who took advantage of those opportunities. The issue with these risks is if I take a major risk, perhaps I try to rob a bank with a note, if I am caught an act like that will result in time in the neighborhood of 5 years. Everything I’ve developed and worked for over the last 6 years is postponed at least 5 years. Not to mention I have papers being considered for publication by different academic journals and they’ve been in review for weeks, which suggests they are receiving serious consideration. There is a chance someone is going to understand the significance of my work and recognize the uniqueness of my capabilities which could open the door to funding and put me in position to do what I want to do. That is to earn a livable income by teaching and advancing my material, and realizing the ideas within it to advance human interests.
12/2020 Vegas
I’ve been in Vegas for about a month. If I were looking at my present situation from the outside looking in I wouldn’t consider the situation to be too bad. However, from the inside looking out my immediate situation as well as my future is bleak. I made a regrettable text to the contrary after finishing a day of work to the person who provided a guaranteed income over a six week period. I was riding a high from endorphins after work, receiving pay, and a desire to express my gratitude. I texted that I appreciated this situation more than I can express.
My first few weeks in Vegas were definitely better than the 10 days I spent in San Diego although I was constantly stressed with trying to find work. I wrote an article describing my first two weeks in Vegas, and during that period I was only able to find work for 3 days, where I made 385 dollars. Shortly after this I performed work for the person I texted above who informed me that he owned companies and could provide steady work for me. The company he assigned me to is experiencing a slow down during the holiday season. He provided me with a guaranteed weekly income for a period of 6 weeks with the option to continue employment at an hourly rate after that period.
I was experiencing issues with the woman I was renting a room from. The main issue was the apartment is gated. When I first arrived she gave me the gate key to make a copy. Most of the locations that offer key copying services have machines and the key was not duplicatable in the machines. A man on the bus overheard me having a conversation with ACE hardware and told me about a convenience store that still had the older machines. I went to the store and I was told the machine was down. The clerk looked at the key and said they didn’t carry that kind of key and recommended Home Depot. Home Depot recommended Liberty Locks. Liberty Locks told me the key was restricted and they weren’t allowed to duplicate it.
I had a key to the apartment but I did not have a key to the gate. Out of about 10 attempts on separate occasions to open the gate I believe there were two attempts when she answered and a few others where her boyfriend came and unlocked the gate. On one occasion she wasn’t home and didn’t respond to my phone call or text. The other occasions she was home and told me she was either on the phone and didn’t receive my call or her phone was off.
There was one area of the apartment where there was a door roughly 8 feet high and I could scale the door to gain access to the courtyard which is what I had to do every time I came home and there wasn’t something propping one of the doors open or there wasn’t someone else there to let me in. Later when this issue and others came out she had the audacity to say “you have access to the unit but not access to the complex”. Which is complete bullshit because I cannot access the unit without accessing the complex.
Prior to having this opportunity for income I was stuck there, with my money hovering between about 3 to 400 dollars. I had to accept that I would have to rely on my athletic ability to gain access to the unit. Of course if I was shorter, it’d be interesting to know how the situation would have played out since I believe the first time I couldn’t gain access was the second night. When I did gain access her boyfriend said she was asleep.
Other than not being able to access the apartment there was what I call constantly playing around the perimeter. What I mean by that is acts that seem intent on being antagonistic that are inconsiderate and borderline disrespectful. Things that cause you to seem petty if you address them but the daily accumulation is clearly intent on being harassing. I felt like the motivation was for me to address these things where the situation could be blown out of proportion and used as an excuse to kick me out.
Their lives consisted of smoking weed and watching TV everyday. I didn’t say much of anything to them. When I was home I was quiet, writing, playing poker online, I always cleaned up after myself, purchased common use items like toilet paper, dish soap, and garbage bags as she had no garbage bags prior to my arrival. I was a perfect roommate despite not being able to access the courtyard without scaling the wall, and despite them dancing on the perimeter. They would wake up at odd hours 3 to 4am, open their door and turn the TV up, and talk loudly.
In the fridge I had one small corner where I kept my food, that consisted of eggs, lunch meat, serrano peppers, butter, mayo, and shredded cheese. Almost the entire top shelf of the fridge was open and they put a plate of leftovers on top of my eggs.
On one occasion I was in the kitchen cooking and they’d come in the kitchen and he began preparing food to microwave instead of extending me the courtesy to finish so we weren’t on top of one another. To add a little context, the kitchen area consisted of a space that was about 4×6, and I typically spent about 10 minutes or less cooking. If I was in the kitchen I was either making a sandwich, a quesadilla, scrambled eggs, or rice that I’d mix with butter, hotsauce, peppers, and cheese. On another occasion, I was cooking and the counter space was very limited and she set out her food that she planned on preparing. Once I was finished I told her I was finished in the kitchen. Before she came out to cook, she left the apartment, came back, and didn’t start cooking until about 45 minutes to an hour later. Which implies the only reason she set her food out was to put it in my way while I was cooking.
Another time her boyfriend helped himself to a cup of soda from my two liter. He should have known it was mine because it was Cherry Coke and his girlfriend only purchased fruit flavored soda. I was going to address that but prior to that they smoked weed with me on a few occasions and I didn’t want to seem petty. However, I believe the reason they smoked weed with me was so I would start buying weed to smoke with them. That didn’t happen, and I was never presented with another opportunity to address it because he only did it once.
This was a one bedroom and I was renting the living room. She had her children over who were going to school one day online. She sent the children into my space to their schooling while her and her boyfriend smoked weed and watched tv in her room. I left and when I came back my items were moved. I have a great deal of affection for children so I wasn’t that bothered by it, but at the same time, she failed to realize that when you rent an area of your house to someone that isn’t your area to do as you please. Second, if she planned on her children doing their schooling in my area, the very least she could have done was give me a heads up.
On other occasions it seemed like she would wait for me to go to sleep, or early in the morning she would slam the microwave. On another occasion she opened the door in the morning while it was cold and I had to get up to close it.
Everytime I finished using a dish I washed the dish immediately. After about 25 days of this behavior I received a voice message text. The text was from the woman who I was renting a room from while I was at work. The message told me I needed to call her immediately and she told me the first time I did something nasty that was it.
I was heated about this. For the first time in 25 days I left dishes in the sink. Which was something that wasn’t intentional, I finished eating and I was thinking about the buses I would catch and what time I would arrive at the location. I waited until my lunch break and called her back and she didn’t pick up. I left her a message saying what makes more sense to you, that for almost a month I washed my dishes every time I was finished with them and then today I intentionally left dishes in the sink, or, that I was in a rush and I forgot to do the dishes?
I was picturing the scenarios when I was on the bus home and I was ready to go off when I got back. She texted me while I was on the bus and said you’re right my bad. When I got back I told her I was good but I was going to be out on the 15th.
Any one of these incidents on their own isn’t significant, but the accumulation of things like this plus many other small things I didn’t mention, are what is meant by playing along the perimeter, where I mean they were borderline disrespectful for the better portion of the time I was there, and I wasn’t in a position where I could jeopardize my living arrangement, although I believe that’s exactly what they wanted me to do.
After getting this job I was looking at rooms for rent and contacting people who were renting rooms and intended to leave on the 15th of December. Sunday was the 13th of December, it was cold outside in the morning. I was on my laptop which was on a TV tray I bought and I was seated on a folding chair I bought near the door. They left and intentionally left the main door open. I got up and slammed the door behind them. They came back and asked if I had a problem and I stated I did, that they intentionally left the door and an argument ensued where she said I was disrespectful. She implied that I had to leave, and wanted to argue about me slamming the door. I told her it happened, I did it, now what did they want to do about it?
Her boyfriend chimed in and said that it didn’t have to be between me and her, it could be between him and I. Something I was only too eager to hear because I know he can’t handle this smoke and he mistakenly thought I was afraid of him. I said what you want to do and I stood up? He went into the room and came back out with a gun saying he doesn’t play the same way I play. I told him if you’re going to shoot, shoot. I said what you think you’re the first mother fucker to pull a gun on me? He became quiet and I told them I wasn’t going anywhere, that I’d be there until the 15th. They left.
I wasn’t worried about the gun and I was glad I had the satisfaction of the verbal altercation which was the build up of everything they’d been doing for the last month. On the other side of it, I also know that he is a lifelong resident of Vegas and she also has family and knows people in Vegas. If they come back with 10 people even though I’m not worried about him shooting me, and as good as I can fight, I’m not going to whoop 10 people. I would focus on one person and try to kill, maim, or disfigure but I’m getting F’d up in that situation. I made the mistake when they returned of trying to talk to her and she was on some hoodrat shit, so I ended the conversation with well then we don’t have shit else to talk about.
Later, since she perceived my efforts to talk to her after I calmed down as weakness she said I want you out by 12pm on the 15th, not 12:01, 12pm. I ignored her. I could have told her I’ll be here until 11:59pm on the 15th because the signed agreement I had stated I was renting the room from 11/16 to 12/16, and if I really wanted to I could have pressed it to 2:30pm on the 16th when I arrived. Instead I just ignored her since initiating a new argument didn’t serve any purpose to me.
Later that day I went to see a room in a trailer park. It was an older woman who was accompanied by her brother. They were very nice and the room had a bed in it. For the previous month I was sleeping on an air mattress. I asked them if I could move in on the 14th, which was the following day since the 15th I could be working and then I’d have more problems with the person I was presently renting a room from. He said give her a $50 dollar deposit and we can start it today. I told them I had a few other places I was going to look at but that I’d let them know by the end of the day. Then he offered the place for $375 which raised some flags to me in other areas, related more to the relationship he had with his sister.
I left and I was seriously considering asking them to move in that day and save myself the trouble. Eventually after exiting the bus I called back and decided I would move that day. I cut a hole in my air mattress, broke my folding chair, and my TV tray so they couldn’t use it since I wasn’t taking it with me. I packed up my items and signed a new agreement with this woman for the next month.
12/13/2020 Diane Flood
Her brother creates the appearance of helping her and I don’t know if his efforts are genuine, or if he creates the illusion that he does things for her in order to get things from her. There are some inconsistencies. The second day I was here she told me her brother wanted her to put her chair and TV in her room. As if I would be bothered by her being in the living room. I told her it wasn’t necessary and she said she didn’t want to and asked me if I’d tell her brother and I said I would. I didn’t have to tell him she told him, but while he was here I made it a point to tell her in front of him that nothing she does bothers me. That she should go about her business as if I’m not here. She is a very sweet older woman who goes out of her way to try and make me comfortable and I do everything I can to help her and reciprocate the kindness.
When I first came she told me she had stage 5 bone cancer. There is no stage 5 bone cancer. I don’t know if she has bone cancer or not but if it were stage 4 I imagine she’d be in much worse shape than she is, and I also believe she’d be seeing the doctor regularly and show the signs of receiving radiation treatment. I don’t know if someone has convinced her she has bone cancer or maybe it is something she made up for sympathy and attention. I seriously doubt she has cancer.
Yesterday I was returning from the gym and she was coming outside just as I was arriving. She said she was going to check the mail and asked if I could check it for her. I reached in the mailbox and grabbed an envelope and handed it to her. She said the envelope was open and it was from someone who was sending her a $150 Walmart gift card. She suspected her brother or niece took it. Her niece moved back to Wisconsin so it couldn’t have been her niece. She believed her brother took it. I don’t know if he did but it was certainly a possibility. His willingness to rent me the room for less money than I was offering for rent was a red flag because it seemed like he had a stake in her getting that money from me. The day before he asked her for $50, saying that she could get it from their mom who was sending him a $50 check in a christmas card he wouldn’t be able to cash because he didn’t have an ID. He seems like a nice guy and I don’t know that he isn’t, but it seems suspicious that he knew when she would be getting this gift card, and the day she received it the envelope was opened and the gift card was gone. Of course the other possibility is she already checked the mail, took out the gift card, and then put the envelope back in the mailbox. Waited for me to return and came outside so I would see that the envelope was in the mailbox and was opened. She may have manufactured this incident in an effort to get sympathy and attention from me and her family. I don’t know what happened but I could do without the situation and whatever her brother’s motives are in her life altogether.
There is one other source of great stress in my life in this new housing situation. There is an infestation of cockroaches. I keep food out of my room and sleep with a light on but should I venture into the kitchen in the evening and the light is off, when I turn the light on they scatter in all directions. I’m not squeamish regarding bugs but had I known this prior to renting this room I would have spent more money to find something else.
At the time there was another room I wanted to rent but this room I don’t believe the person was actually trying to rent. The night I rented this room I contacted that person to let them know I was no longer a candidate for tenancy. The next day she sent me an advertisement to become a business partner with her selling health and wellness products. The business plan appeared to be buying into the company and then getting others to sell the products, where the referrer which in her case would be her would either mark up the products to the people she’d sell them to who would then sell them to other people, or she’d get a kick back for the products people she referred bought. I sent a long text message back about why I wasn’t interested. Mainly I didn’t believe in the products. Health to me is primarily genetic, then exercise, intoxicants, and nutrition. When I viewed the apartment a few days prior she looked pretty decent and I texted her as much. I texted that I liked her look when she showed me the room, told her I was going to be here for a month and asked her if she wanted to hang out sometime. I also asked her if she was renting the room as a marketing tool or if she was actually renting the room. She didn’t respond, but I presume it was a marketing tool to establish contacts to solicit for her business.
The other rooms I was offered all had sexual undertones. One guy sent me a picture of his ass. Another was two guys who said they were nudists and asked if I had a problem with people walking around in “boxers at most”. I didn’t have any interest in those rooms.
The other day I went to a nearby park to get out of the house. I went there to prepare a lesson. I went through the decision making process and created exercises to teach people the elements of the decision making process which is actually intent on showing people what morality is tangibly. This leads into Liberty as the Basis for Objective Morality. The greatest source of my discontent is that I have a wealth of important things to teach and no one who is interested in learning them. If I can’t do that, I’m fucked in life, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to. I think by the time I receive my last check I’m going to have about 2k saved. Best case scenario is I can get a reliable car for $1500, spend $300 on insurance down payment and plates and I’ll have about $200 and a car. Then what do I do? Where do I go? I’m still stuck on a planet with people who avoid the acknowledgement of useful information.
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What’s strange about my discontent is I felt that way despite having accomplished every short term goal I set out to accomplish. When I left Milwaukee my immediate objectives were to establish an income, establish shelter, join a gym to exercise, begin promoting my material, build my curriculum, and save money to buy a car. I’ve only finished one lesson on the decision making process. I began there because they are concepts that are easier to grasp than beginning with objects and assignments, but more importantly, it introduces morality through the decision making process; where a person can grasp morality as something more than a vague conception of what is right or wrong. Where morality is understood as something tangible through the feelings imposed in the decision making process, which can be built on in the second lesson on Liberty is the Basis for Objective Morality, where moral feelings are defined, and experiencing moral feelings is broadened from the decision making process into perception. This is why the first lesson is the decision making process and the second will be Liberty is the Basis. From there I may put a lesson together from founding intents, which will likely break down into 2 to 4 parts. Or I go into Balance Stimulus which provides an understanding of basic capitalist economic foundation as it relates to the decision of production, and then into income and the impediments of income; why the poor remain poor. Then the need for the Balance Stimulus.
I can put the second lesson together in an hour or two. I’ve already reduced LIB to 10 key components, which is how it reduced naturally, not something I attempted to reduce it to for an even number.
Everything is ignored, and then there are meritless responses like the one I received from the journal I submitted the balance stimulus idea to where the reviewer made critical remarks that were already addressed in the article. I can just be ignored and none of this matters. I don’t just blame the academic community, activists, politicians, or organized interests who have shut me out, I blame the general population. People who are childish and build their reality around information that causes them to feel good are not concerned whether or not what they believe is true and how it impacts their interests and others, just so long as they can maintain the reality that gives joy to their lives.
Why don’t I go back to criminality? 1st, the opportunities don’t exist as they once did. I primarily sold drugs which requires suppliers and clients and those circles have fallen apart or changed. As far as higher risk criminality is concerned my anchoring objective is my material. Conceptually there isn’t much more for me to gain in this life. I live for the slim chance that I will be able to make a living teaching these things, that I will be able to increase the intelligence and liberty of this species. Not because I have a great deal of love, compassion, or empathy that drives me to struggle to serve human interests. This was true at one time when I was a fraction of what I am today, but it is not true today.
Today, it is the only thing that makes sense. You can’t imagine what it feels like to see the bullshit so clearly and the masses who eagerly consume it. This endless circulation of bullshit that is detrimental to human interests and produces the unnecessary problems that we have. As I mentioned, all human problems are a product of self deception and inadequate opportunities for time and money.
Why don’t I invest my time in some lucrative endeavor, secure my own space with money and time and enjoy the show? The effort required isn’t worth the value of having just to have. 38 years old may not seem old to many people, but when you’ve endured what I’ve endured for 38 years and have the experiences I have, the shit that excites you doesn’t excite me. In a few weeks hopefully I can find a car to last me about 6 months but what does that do for me? All the shit going on around me and not really knowing how I am going to find a student or students and make money. Seeing the return to a struggle living out of a car, which is more difficult than in times past because this idiot fucking species has shut down showering at gyms over a virus that is no greater risk to public health than the flu is. Still have to work bullshit gigs to survive while I make no progress towards what I should be doing and what I want to be doing. Even in the little bit of short term progress I’m experiencing, I have nothing to really be happy about.
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As I commented previously there was a situation where she met me outside as I was coming back from the gym. I suspect she set the whole thing up to play the victim so I would be sympathetic and pay more attention to her and do more for her.
This was followed by a phone call that was either real or fake but intended for me to hear where she said “if he keeps borrowing money from me I’m going to have to move back to Wisconsin” which based on what she had been saying was in reference to her brother Rick. She told stories about how her brother had forced her to get loans that he kept, charged her $300 to visit her when she was sick in the hospital, and implied that he rarely came around without expectations of receiving money. She basically said she couldn’t say no to him.
She asked me to hold onto her money. I agreed and wrote her a receipt for 192 dollars. Later that day Rick came by and gave her a blanket, some pinecones, and his George Foreman grill for Christmas. Prior to this we had a long conversation where she was saying all these horrible things about Rick, and more, that I didn’t include, like her saying the neighbors said he used to yell at their mother when she lived there for money. All of this was intended to paint herself as a victim, an effort to use my sympathy to gain my attention and help her. This isn’t to say Rick isn’t a piece of shit, he may be, I don’t know.
I initially suggested that what Rick did for her on Christmas was likely a manipulative tactic to get money from her. She said she wanted to give him $20. I began to write the $20 on the receipt and she asked what I thought and I shared my suspicion that Rick did what he did in an effort to get money from her. He brought those things, said some nice things to her, and then told her he had to go fly a sign to get dinner. I told her I thought he did these things because it would make her happy and appreciative and want to give him money since he said he was going to have to beg for money for dinner.
Then I brought up that if he really wanted to make you feel good why not come over and spend some time with her, watch a movie and talk with her. I asked her what she would say if Rick asked if he could spend Christmas and have dinner with her? She agreed she would have made dinner and liked to have him here. He also told her to tell her mom about what he did for her, which is probably something he believes could play a role in him getting money from their mom.
Their mom lives with a woman named Denise who I believe is their sibling. Today I heard her say after being told she doesn’t tell mom they called, something to the effect that it was because they were always calling their mom about money. There is a chance I heard it wrong but I’m fairly confident that’s what I heard. Something I mentioned that adds to the significance of her telling me he said to tell their mom what he did for him.
She did change her mind on giving him money that day.
The following day after leaving the gym and beginning to vent my circumstantial frustrations I received a call from her. She asked if I left the money at the house, I told her no, but I was on my way home from the gym. I called her brother a leech which he didn’t deny, and then recorded me giving her back her money. As I walked to my room I told Rick I shouldn’t have called him a leech that I’m going based on what I’ve heard. He wasn’t upset or offended either way, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions like that since a lot of what she says is questionable.
Rick was taking her to the casino and as the story goes he made sure she only lost $40, he didn’t play or ask for money, and then he brought her home. She came back excited and I thought it was very good for her to get out of the house and experience the stimulation of a new setting. She was in a good mood and I was happy for her.
This morning Rick came by and she commented to him that she thought I was gone. She tells him it’s like walking around on egg shells around here in the morning because I don’t want to make no noise, and implied that she had to be quiet in the morning on my account. This is complete bullshit because not once since I’ve been here have I said anything to her about being loud, and stated on a few occasions when she’s asked me that she doesn’t bother me with noise. There’s no basis for this comment other than her trying to play the victim role to Rick for his attention and sympathy.
There were two times when I spoke to her with some frustration. One night she knocked on my door around 10 to 10:30pm. I ignored her because I was trying to go to sleep. She left. Later on near midnight she knocked on my door again and I said what? She said I’m going to make some fries, do you want some fries? I said no I want to sleep because I have to wake up at 5:15 in the morning. This comment had nothing to do with any noise she was making; it was about her knocking on my door.
On Christmas when she deposited her money with me for safe keeping she asked if she could talk to me and I talked to her about the issues that I mentioned. I also went to the corner store and purchased her a pack of cigarettes that day. There are some things I don’t mind doing for her, checking the mail, taking the garbage out and taking the garbage to the curb which I believe is my responsibility. There is other things I’ve done for her as well like I helped her remove a candle from a broken holder, gave her a website to watch the Packer game when it wasn’t on a channel available to her, swept up a pile she swept, made her a plate of food, got her cup of juice, and some other things. The day after Christmas she asked if she could talk to me for a little bit. I said I was busy, and I was a little bit, playing a poker tournament but I didn’t want to be bothered with a meeting about whatever she had going on. Later she asked if I knew about a store that was about a block away from the corner store, I told her no. If she expected that I was going to be running daily errands for her she was sorely mistaken. She didn’t bring it back up once I told her I wasn’t familiar with the store.
I haven’t used the kitchen in about a week’s time. After finishing my rice about a week ago and the abundance of roaches in the kitchen, where sometimes even with the lights on during the evening hours there are small ones crawling around and in the microwave, I stopped cooking food here. Although I wash my dishes before and after I use them, there is something about the sight of bugs in an area where you’re preparing food that affects the flavor and your appetite. I haven’t used the kitchen with the exception of washing out my shaker cup, but I don’t cook. I helped her finish up the Christmas dinner she made. I did not want to eat it because I didn’t know how old the chicken she was making was but I also didn’t want to be rude.
We can argue that since I ate with her I should have helped her wash those dishes. I did wash the dishes I used but not the pan the chicken was cooked in. Both sides of the sink were already filled with dishes, and they were not dishes made by me. I really, really did not want to participate in that meal but this was before the serious acrimony began. Things weren’t great, she was talking shit about me, implying things that weren’t true, but she hadn’t begun to be vindictive when I wouldn’t do things for her that were outside of the leaser\leasee relationship. I didn’t want to reject the meal she made and add to that.
She begins telling Rick how I don’t like to help, and acts as if she is constantly cooking for me but I don’t help her do the dishes. She tells him she’s going to have the tenant rake the leaves.
As Rick’s washing the dishes he comments to her how he can do a better job since she can only use one arm. This seemed like another horse shit story since she hadn’t commented about an injury and I know on Christmas day, 2 days ago her arm was working fine. This seems like another effort to cause me to feel sympathy for her which would translate in me doing more for her.
Rick washes the dishes and after finishing them came around by my window before he left. I had my curtain drawn and the window open. He said “Bye Mr. O, I got the kitchen cleaned up for you”. To which I responded “you didn’t get it cleaned for me, you got it cleaned for her, I clean up my messes after I make them”. He said “I know, I was just telling you that it’s clean if you need to use it”.
At some point she commented to Rick that her friend’s roommate coordinates dinner and they plan their day out around what they’re going to do. In addition to what I mentioned she was basically telling Rick I was a bad tenant for not performing what amounts to caregiver duties. This is the day after she told me if I needed a reference when I moved she was going to give me a good reference.
I also found my soap which was firmly on the ledge of the shower underneath my wash cloth sitting on the bathroom floor. All of this pisses me off but she’s like an old fucking child. This victim for attention and help game is probably something she’s been doing her whole life. I’m confident that Rick was assisting this morning with his comment about her sudden loss of mobility in one of her arms.
While I was in my room listening to this I considered confronting her about it but it doesn’t seem appropriate because I can be intimidating to an old woman and her old weasel brother. I didn’t want to shit on her and later feel like I intimidated her which may cause me to be more apt to doing things for her that I otherwise would. If I feel I’ve acted wrong towards a person I become more inclined to do more for them or I may treat them with excessive kindness in an effort to right the wrong. This is what I mean by confronting her about this bullshit, especially since I’m not emotionally neutral to it, could cause me to say something to her or say something in a way that comes off as intimidating, and if it does, I’m going to end up giving her what she wants. Which is not what I want because I do not want my day interrupted 3 to 4 times a day for nonsense or chores that were not stipulated in our rental agreement. That is the main reason I didn’t continue to do things, because her insatiable pursuit of attention interrupted what I was doing, and was also imposing on my time. Instead of confronting what she’s saying I’m just waiting for her to ask me to do something for her and I’m going to tell her no. With the exception of taking the garbage to the curb, I’ll do that since I contribute to the garbage.
When I rented this room there were no expectations that I would cook for her, clean for her, or run errands for her. I’ve done some of this out of the feelings I get from helping someone. Once it becomes an expectation and those expectations grow then it is not me helping because I want to help, it’s obligatory help, and since I am not responsible for her circumstances, I have no obligation to help. If when I rented the room she told me part of renting the room was to also provide caregiver services I would not have rented the room. Of course, if she told me there was a roach infestation I also wouldn’t have rented the room, and I wouldn’t have gone grocery shopping either. She has the audacity to think I’m responsible for her responsibilities.
Whether or not Rick has done everything she says I don’t know, there is enough evidence to suggest he manipulates her and her mother, but she uses the manufacture of sympathy to manipulate others so it’s difficult to know what if anything that she said about Rick is true. Fucked up people. That shit doesn’t work against objective morality and Assignment Sequencing, and Comparison. I had to chronicle this shit after mentioning my suspicions.
—
I was having a conversation with a guy who is Mexican, had subtly feminine manners which combined with his appearance most people would infer that he was gay. Well I don’t know if most people would make that inference considering how feminine most straight people have become. I mentioned some of the titles of the articles I’ve written including The Myth of Systemic Racism in the United States. After I mentioned this title he said he worked for a guy for 10 years, an older catholic white guy who treated him poorly because of the color of his skin.
There were a few things that jumped out to me. Despite him feeling like he was being treated differently because of the color of skin, his boss clearly didn’t try to fire him because of the color of his skin. 2nd, how do you know he was treating you differently because of the color of your skin? It seems equally plausible that as an old Catholic he may have been treating you differently because of what he believed your sexuality was. Still it seems equally plausible that there were things about your behavior he didn’t like, where he just didn’t like you because you and him like different things. It seems equally plausible that he didn’t like you because you’re intelligent and perceived you as a threat within the company. It seems equally plausible that maybe the guy was just an asshole to everybody. Those raised with ideas that the only way a person of another race can treat you like shit is because of the color of your skin will claim this is the motivation of any person of another race treating them with less respect than they think they deserve.
Even if this guy was treating him differently based on race it didn’t prevent him from working for the company. 2nd, if the treatment was racially motivated, is there a difference between working for a boss who treats an employee like shit for any other reason besides race, and one who treats an employee like shit because of race? If it’s overtly about race then the employee could have the manager fired. So again you don’t know if the treatment is motivated by race or if the person dislikes you because of your behavior. Lastly, it doesn’t challenge that systemic racism is a myth because he wasn’t fired or denied an income opportunity because of it. He just had to work for an asshole boss the same as a lot of people in the corporate world. Finally, if it was an example, it’s one example relative to all other employment relationships and is an exception not the norm.
—
This living arrangement is ridiculous. Another morning I heard her tell Rick she wanted him to move in. She whispered to him I can give the tenant back his rent. Rick declined probably as much out of his aversion to living here as his understanding that 1: if she tried to do that I wouldn’t leave, and 2: I have a written and signed as well as recorded agreement that upon the payment of $400 I am renting this room until the 15th of January.
Although not my business, something interesting happened pertaining to just how shitty these people are. Rick was talking to presumably a family member in Florida. He said he was going to see if his mom wanted to get a place with him in Florida. Rick doesn’t have any money so it really translates to he’s going to try to convince his mom to get a place in Florida and leech off of her. The next day Rick is here and Diane calls her mom. She leads in with how Rick told her that she (their mom) doesn’t like it where she’s at, that she’s yelled at if she even drops a crumb. Her mom seemed to refute the idea because Diane said why would Rick say that if you like it there? Rick told her it’s because Denise (the lady she lives with probably her other daughter) must be right there.
She passes the phone to Rick and Rick leads in that he was talking with (I think) Randy and makes it seem as if it was this guy’s idea about bringing her down to Florida. Tells her about all the stuff they could do for her down there. Judging by the conversation she doesn’t seem interested. Following the resistance Rick reminds her of some nice thing he did for her, seemingly intent on causing her to feel good about him to give the idea more consideration. The call ended shortly after. I presume the mother by now is privy to her son’s manipulative tactics.
I woke up that day and the internet was out. I presumed after all of her grievances related to me not being her servant she may have just unplugged the router. Which was fine, wifi was a bonus not something that was part of the rental agreement the same as caregiving services were not a part of the rental agreement. She asked me if the internet was working? I said no. She said they must have shut it off. Then she said she owed $280 on the bill. She added I used to have tenants help me with the bill. Like I’m going to fork out $140 after being here 2 weeks for her internet bill that probably represents 3 or more months in arrears. I told her maybe she’ll find a tenant who will do that in the future.
Later that day, I returned home from the gym and she was in Rick’s car smiling and waving to me, despite having been shitting on me for the past 3 days when I’ve been a model tenant. I waved back but I was irritated by the comments Rick made. He made it a point to say to her “you just have to let me know when to pick you up”? He said this a few times the first time he took her to the casino and the only reason he says it is to appear to me as if he’s just giving her a ride and not getting anything from her. I don’t care whether it benefits him or not, it’s just insulting to my intelligence. When she initially brought everything up to me about Rick and the supposedly stolen Walmart card I was willing to help her. I did this by telling her she had to say no, showing how he tried to manipulate her on Christmas, and agreeing to hold onto her money. But at the end of the day it is her decision, and based on how she has tried to portray me to Rick, even though I still think he’s a piece of shit, I know she is just as manipulative as he is for other purposes.
This morning I woke up and heard someone walking and saying something straight down the hallway. A few moments later my door opens. There’s a young man there and I say can I help you? He says excuse me and closes the door. First thoughts were that Diane was showing the room. Then I get up because this guy may have been trying to burglarize the house. I go to the living room and then outside, and he’s gone. I was upset with myself for not moving quicker. Later Diane returned and I went to tell her that someone was in the house but the young man was with her. It appeared he was helping her with something and may have opened my door by mistake.
It also seems possible, especially since she probably lost all her money at the casino that she thinks she can move someone in on the 1st, charge them a full month’s rent for 400, and then give me 200 for my half month in January to make $200. She’s going to be sorely fucking mistaken if she tries, because I’m not going anywhere until the 15th.
It’s sick to have to deal with this bullshit. Other than her knocking on my door late at night, and my unwillingness to allow her to manipulate me into being her servant, I’m a perfect tenant. I’m quiet, I clean up after myself, I don’t complain, and prior to her thinking I was obligated to do things for her I helped her out regularly.
—
Despite what I wrote about not doing shit for her, I was still kind enough to plunge the toilet she clogged, explain to her where she could post a service for her brother on Craigslist, and emptied her garbage into the trash before bringing the trash to the curb. While it could be argued that I unclogged the toilet for my own purposes, I was pretty set on using the toilet at the gym and pissing in the shower and washing it down with soap if need be. It would be more work but I don’t like the games. So yes, it was almost worth it to me to go through scheduling a shit at the gym every day, and pissing in the shower and washing it down with soap, just so she would have to put in the 10 plunges of effort that I put in to unclog the toilet.
After returning from the gym she asked if she could talk with me as I walked back to my room. When I sat down to talk to her she said when I opened the door it scared her. She didn’t seem visibly shaken. She asked if I would use the back door and I agreed or told her I would knock prior to entering. Maybe now she thinks she can use whatever medical condition she may or may not have to kick me out. The problem is, I’ve been coming and going for 17 days and this is the first day it’s been a problem? She has had other roommates here and never commented about how the door opening has startled her. Piece of shit fucking people, and now I regret unclogging the toilet and taking her trash out.
She tries to manipulate people into helping her and giving her attention by creating sympathy. This is why she tells people she has stage 5 cancer, and talks about people being bad to her to other people. If her tactics fail she becomes vindictive. I’m definitely not using the back door and I’m going to let her know that in the morning. If she wants to play the game I will knock before I come in because I don’t believe that’s too unreasonable, even though the problem is manufactured. I don’t think it’s only about me not doing things for her she’d like me to do for her, I think it’s more my isolation from her altogether, where she craves attention that I’m not interested in providing.
—
As I mentioned I continued to use the front door. And she didn’t say anything else about it for a day. Today she wakes up from a nap, walks past my room and says you need to start using the back door. I told her I’m not using the back door because for 16 days there was no problem with using the front door, other people are still using the front door and you have no problem with it, and you can’t change the rental agreement mid month. I told her she’s manipulative, and vindictive, and the only reason she wants me to use the backdoor is because I won’t do what she wants me to do. She started yelling, and I told her I’m not using the back door and if she locks and refuses to open it I’m calling the police. She then repeated I got something to tell them.
I have done nothing to this woman other than not doing things she wants me to do for her. That’s her only grievance with me and it was not part of the agreement that I would plan meals with her, clean up for her, run errands for her, have meetings with her, or do yard work for her.
She did score one victory in her pursuit of making me do something. I smoked a joint in my room since I planned on not going to the gym, relaxing, playing poker, and writing. I had on previous occasions and I guess on those occasions she didn’t notice. 1st, I didn’t think it was a problem because she smokes cigarettes in the house and it was never brought to my attention that I couldn’t. Nevada has legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Now she said she can’t have marijuanna smoke in her house because of her condition, where if she was concerned about aggravating her condition she wouldn’t smoke, and wouldn’t smoke in her house. I know it is just her being vindictive, but it is a reasonable rule that I don’t have a problem respecting. I’ll step outside.
—
Today when I came on the porch she thought I was Rick and began to say Rick and ask a question. This detail becomes relevant further along in this entry.
I walked past and she said “do you need the key back for your lock?” Shortly after I moved in I purchased a gym membership. I bought a lock at Walgreens intending to put my things in a locker at the gym and lock it. Unfortunately the locker section of the gym is closed.
After her Walmart card was stolen or after she staged the incident, she said she wanted to lock the gate. Having a lock I didn’t need for the gym I told her she could use the lock and gave her a key. It was on the gate for about a day and then I asked her if she wanted me to take it off and she did. I told her I didn’t need the key back, and it’s true I didn’t need the key back since I have another key, but the value of having a spare key is not greater than having to interact with her to get it. The act of avoiding her is of higher value than is the key. She said “should I throw it out”, and I said “that’s fine”.
I’m in my room for a few minutes and she couldn’t resist the opportunity to try and start some shit. She said “can you knock before you come in so I have some warning you’re coming”? If you remember I explained she said the reason why she wanted me to use the back door was because suddenly, after 16 days of using the front door, on the 17th day she was startled. Me knocking on the door is something that will give her a heads up. But when I was walking up the mother fucking stairs this bitch started talking to me believing I was Rick. Which means she heard and hears me when I’m walking up the stairs. Instead of explaining this to her, where she’ll try to talk over me which naturally causes me to try to talk over her to finish my point, I just ignored her. Since she wants my attention and wants to provoke a response, I’ll completely ignore her until I leave. She can say whatever she wants to say and I’m not going to acknowledge her. Kind of like the academic community and general public does when I’m attempting to explain something to them that undermines their beliefs.
—
I returned home from the gym after dark, it was probably about 6pm. The lights were off in the living room and there was a fake plant placed in the walkway that leads to my room. I don’t know if she expected me to fall down or if she was just hoping that it provoked some kind of response. I thought it was hilarious. She places the plant and a blanket in the path I need to go through to get to my room, shuts off the lights, like she was going to get me with that trap.
A nasty used piece of toilet paper has been on the floor in the bathroom for 3 days now, and this morning I found feces on the front of the toilet seat. I believe the toilet paper on the floor (I use flushable wet wipes not toilet paper) has been left there because it will give her some kind of satisfaction if I clean it up, probably the same as feces on the toilet seat. I’ve made plans to use the toilet at the gym.
She offered me $100 to leave a week early, but the inconvenience of leaving a week early isn’t worth the $100 since I still have to be here through the 15th if I need to work between the 8th and the 15th. I suppose it depends on whether I get my stimulus and purchase a car this week.
—
Not much new today but the day is still fresh. Today there is more shit on the toilet seat and what appears to be shit on the floor in the bathroom.
Each day she calls her mom and probably others saying that she can’t take me being here, that she wakes up and counts down the days. She told her mom she doesn’t feel comfortable going into the living room with me being here. She tries to depict me as a drug addict claiming I’m a druggie. These claims are not a product of my behavior affecting her in any way but her interaction with other people relies on making herself out to be a victim to gain their sympathy and attention. In the beginning she was talking about how bad her niece and brother were to her, and would call her mom and Denise and tell them how bad they were to her. Now I’m another person she can complain to others about.
Today she knocked on my door and said her mother was offering me 150 dollars to leave tomorrow. Again what do I do? I’m quiet to the point where she doesn’t know when I’m here or not as evidenced by several occasions when I’ve been here and her brother has been here and she commented to him that she didn’t think I was here before and after talking shit about me that had nothing to do with any specific examples of behavior. I do not use the kitchen because it is typically disgusting and there are often roaches present sometimes during the day. The presence of bugs affects the flavor of the food and my appetite. I use the bathroom, but only to urinate since I refuse to clean up her feces from the seat. I also take showers. I don’t go in any other area of the house unless I’m passing through the living room to leave or returning. If she is in the living room I don’t look at her or say anything to her coming or going unless she says something to me, and my answers are to the point and stated matter of factly. I have not complained about any of her behavior, not when she stomps through the hall, not when she slams her door, not when she’s talking shit about me on the phone, not when she woke at 4:30am on NYE and turned the TV up watching fireworks from around the world or anything she does. There is no basis for her to say she doesn’t feel comfortable doing anything, because with the exception of telling her not to knock on my door I haven’t complained or told her I had a problem with anything she does.
As I mentioned previously, I smoked a joint in my room about a week ago. The reason being she smokes cigarettes in the house so I didn’t think it was a big deal and hadn’t been told that it wasn’t allowed. When she told me she had an issue with it I haven’t smoked any marijuanna in the house or even in the park. More importantly, whether I smoke or I do not smoke it does not adversely affect my behavior. In fact I would contend that it has a positive impact on behavior in the house because it facilitates thoughts that suppress emotions that arise due to her constant harassment, which is both direct and indirect.
Today I came back from the gym. I was watching Tour Bus Tales on my phone and was probably as loud as I’ve been since I’ve been here. The stories are funny and I laugh loudly. The sound of my laughter must be infuriating to her. I presume on this cause and effect relationship because she hates me because I won’t give her my attention and apply my energy to her tasks.
I took a break from watching the show to send a message about a car on ebay I was interested in. I heard her on the phone with her mother making the complaints that I described above about how I’m a druggie, and how she doesn’t feel comfortable going in the living room. She came to the door and unnecessarily knocked on the door to tell me her mother was offering $150 to leave. I went through the summary of my behavior and asked what she had a problem with? She just said it’s not working out. I told her about herself being manipulative and vindictive and that her issues are in her head and stem from me not doing what she wanted me to do. On the previous occasion, she stuck her fingers in her ears and repeated I don’t want to hear it which is why from that point forward I tried to ignore her unless she said or asked something that required a response. She concluded on this occasion by saying she doesn’t want a druggie in her house.
There are a few points here 1: I smoke a very small amount of marijuanna a few times per week(legal in Nevada), so A: I’m not a druggie, and B: I respect her preference to not smoke it in the house. 2: When I do smoke, it does not produce behavior in me that is disruptive or outwardly deviates from my behavior when I haven’t smoked. Even if I smoked all day everyday it wouldn’t matter because it has no negative impact on behavior as a tenant.
I was considering the offer but it was contingent upon the seller of the car. I was interested in answering questions I had about the car in a way that would have created confidence in the purchase. The car was in Phoenix, the auction ends tomorrow at 8am. If I was going to buy the car I would take the 150, leave tomorrow on a bus to Phoenix (flights were over $100 on short notice) pick up the car and drive it back to Vegas because I have work on Monday and Tuesday.
Unfortunately, the seller’s response did not create confidence as he told me he bought it at an auction for his son, drove it 1 mile at 40mph, let it idle for 20 mins, and doesn’t know anything else about it. It seems very unlikely to me that you would purchase a car and not take it on the freeway and drive it a little bit to see what you got. I’m not purchasing the car and will be staying probably until the 15th, but at least until Wednesday.
—
Friday at about 5am I heard her talking on the phone which consisted of the usual general allusion to things that depicted my behavior as something it was not and talk about giving me $150 to leave that day. I was fed up, came out of the room and yelled at her spelling everything out to her, voicing my suspicions about whether she even had cancer, and saying unnecessary mean things like her brother didn’t like her. (He doesn’t, he does enough for her and spends just enough time with her to position himself to get things from her. If he liked his sister he would spend time with her outside of trying to work his angles and he does not) After this she seemed accepting of the fact I was going to be there on those terms and seemed intent on leaving me alone.
For the rest of the day she seemed intent on convincing me that she did have cancer, calling doctors and nurses and telling them she hadn’t been taking her medicine and ordering medicine which did come today.
Last night I bought a car from an auction, the details of which are in the article gambled and lost. I did not want to continue in the acrimony while I was adding a car to the situation. I anticipated all kinds of issues with parking my car, performing routine maintenance, and now almost definitely having to perform a major repair.
I didn’t return until after 11 and she was sleeping, probably believing I was in my room all the while. I washed a sink full of dishes but not all the dishes.
She woke up and I heard her on the phone talking shit. She started playing this wear and tear from me laying on the bed card real hard. She said “he thinks he lives here”, lol. Yeah I’m renting a fucking room, but my room and the bathroom are the only rooms I go in.
After she got off the phone she saw my car in the driveway. She thought it was her niece Ashley and began calling her name. I came out and nicely told her that I bought a car and we exchanged a few friendly words.
Later I told her if she needed to show the room when I’m not home, that I would be working Monday and Tuesday and wouldn’t be back until at least 3.
I also used the back door but this was more a matter of convenience since I was going to and from my car parked on the slab which is nearest to the back door. She was happy about that despite her purposes for having me use the back door were illegitimate. She was happy that I was doing what she wanted.
My willingness to do what she wanted had an effect on her behavior and disposition towards me. Whether or not this was amplified by her medication I don’t know, but either way it achieved the desired effect.
She may believe that me knowing she has cancer caused me to change my behavior, but I remember the last 2 weeks. I still don’t care if she doesn’t wake up. What I was concerned with is having an issue with her that jeopardizes being able to have my car here since I now have very little money, and I’m without the ability to legally have my car on the streets.
I’m forced to change how I interact with her and make the extra effort to maintain harmony to protect my interests, which is maintaining a space and area to keep and work on my car.
It confirms my read on her subconscious functions.
—
My last week was pretty peaceful as I went out of my way to do things for her and even loaned her money for a pack of cigarettes I went to the store to get for her. She apologized repeatedly for her behavior, blaming it on not taking her cancer treatment medication, which happens to coincide with me buying the car and catering to her desire to have me do things for her. Then her phone conversations turned towards shitting on Rick.
She found a new friend, early 30s, who would watch TV, listen to music, and do things for her. He seemed to have his own issues as he expressed to her that he talked to walls. This was during my last 2 to 3 days.
Her problems with people come out of nowhere once she isn’t being stimulated, and then dissipate just as quickly once she is stimulated with attention. This is why her morning ritual is to call people and tell them how hard other people are making her life, because it gains the attention of others.
Once her friend left she sought stimulation by harassing me since it is the only way she could get attention. Instead of venting my frustration for her making a difficult situation more difficult through her distractions and harassment I pleaded with her. I told her that she knew I had to work on my car, that I would be done as soon as I could get done, and promised her I’d be out that day. She noticed I had half a doctor pepper and asked if she could have my doctor pepper? I took one more drink and gave it to her.
Later on when her friend didn’t come back after she told him to come back she started again, but this time I let her have it. I was far enough along where if she called the police and told them she wanted me off the property I could have the car movable and change the spark plugs in a parking lot by the time they got there. I was also confident that if I talked to the police and told them that this day was my check out and she agreed to let me fix my car before I left they would allow me to finish.
Things turned around again after this. Once her mood changed I offered her 2 dollars for a water and a cigarette. My vape was out of juice and my hands were too greasy for me to get to my juice without getting a lot things dirty that I didn’t want to get dirty. Shesaid she didn’t have any but took the $2 and gave me 2 waters. I told her I would get her a pack once I finished my car. Later she got a cigarette from her neighbor that she shared with me.
When I left I didn’t bring her back a pack of cigarettes, because I remember not only how much of a cunt she was to me that day, but how she had treated me poorly for no good reason in the two weeks preceding me buying the car when I gave her what she wanted in service to peace of mind about my car being there. The garbage was full of leaves, something I discovered when I deposited a bag of packaging, my old water pump, thermostat and other items in a bag into it. When I finished I had a few more packages, empty water jugs, and a jug with the old coolant in it. I lined the items up in a row and left them. Something intended to aggravate her but was probably an asset to her cause. An asset because she can call everyone up and tell them how I left her driveway a mess to get sympathy and attention, and second, because Rick or her neighbor will probably throw the items out so she’ll feel happy someone did something for her.
I’m glad she has cancer. To me she is well deserving. I’m also glad she’s fighting that cancer with Time cigarettes, a poor diet, and very little physical activity. I don’t wish good things for shitty people.
Yes I understand that in the final week I was being manipulative to serve my interests, but this was a necessity based on her behavior. Otherwise, I’d have been the same respectful and honest person I usually am.
12/2020 Gambled and Lost
When I played poker tournaments the first rule was position. By this I mean how you play a hand early in a tournament is not the same way you will play that hand late in a tournament. For example if it’s early in the tournament and someone jams and you have them covered with big slick you might call for a coin flip against what you presume is a small pocket pair, and hopefully a lower ace combination. However, even if you think you have the best hand later in a tournament, you may fold if someone jams preflop because you could either miss the money or place much lower by taking that gamble without seeing the flop. End up being dominated by AA or KK.
Last night I took a gamble at a car auction that did not pay off. It was a bad play based on my position. I saved about $1500. Next week I should have $600 coming from my stimulus check and another $460 from work. This means I’d have about $1800 to spend on a car, and could probably wrestle a car from a seller asking 23 to 2500. I’d be able to inspect the car while it’s running, and test drive the car to ensure a good degree of reliability.
From the beginning of the auction there were cars I was interested in but most of those cars went above what I could afford. There were other cars that I was not interested in that impressed me with how quiet the engines were when they came around that sold for prices within my budget that I regretted not bidding on.
There was one car in particular I was interested in posted in the CL ad advertising the auction. When I arrived at the auction to preview all the cars it fell to about 4th or 5th in terms of interest, but it still appealed to me nonetheless.
2012 Chevy Malibu. I knew someone who had an 09 or 10 that I drove a few years ago and I liked the car. This car had 190k on it but if I could get it within my budget which was less than 1200 and it lasted me 20,000 miles I’m good with that investment.
When they brought it around it was a little louder than I would have liked but didn’t seem all that rough running. I bid and there was another person who was bidding against me. I won the car with an $1100 bid.
I was a little worried after I completed the purchase just because they had to jump it to get it started, but I assumed they probably swapped out the good batteries. Maybe they don’t because there was an older gentleman whose car was cranking but he couldn’t get it to start. Either way, a bad battery in itself isn’t a big deal.
The car idles a little bit rough and sounded as if it was a little low on oil. As I was driving I was paying attention to the temperature gauge. After a few miles I noticed it exceeded the halfway point. Typically a car that doesn’t have a cooling problem will rest in the middle but I have known cars that rest a little above or a little below the halfway point. I was hoping this was one of those cars, but it was not.
When the temperature gauge reached about 3/4th of the way I knew there was a problem. I turned on the heat and it was blowing cold air, which means there is either little or no coolant, a problem with the thermostat, heater core, or water pump.
As the temperature rose I began looking for a place to pull over. I also knew the battery wasn’t going to hold a charge so I needed to go to a gas station so I could get a jump.
There is an Arco I think near Las Vegas Blvd and Charleston, maybe a little before or after, that is accessible from the westbound lane and I was traveling eastbound. I pulled into the turning lane to make a u turn to go to the gas station. Suddenly the heat began to blow hot and the temperature went down. I pulled out of the turning lane and proceeded home.
The car intermittently went from running hot to rapidly cooling off with the heat blowing cold to suddenly blowing hot.
I hoped it was just the thermostat sticking because that’s an easy $15 to $20 fix.
The next morning there were two factors that contributed to my optimism: 1, there were no stains on the concrete which indicated the car wasn’t leaking anything when I pulled up. And 2, the reservoir appeared empty.
Usually if a car is low on coolant it won’t overheat and then go down. The heat won’t blow completely cold and then blow hot it will just blow lukewarm air. While my hope was still in the idea that the thermostat was bad since a bad thermostat will produce those symptoms, I also had a little hope that maybe this car would exhibit those symptoms because of very low coolant. I was also well aware that a failing water pump will also produce those symptoms.
I checked the oil and it appeared to be at the very bottom of the dipstick or not at all. The dipstick on that car is not traditional. It is a very poor design that makes it difficult to know where the oil actually is.
I went to Walmart and purchased oil and coolant before I purchased a battery. The reason being is I didn’t have a wrench, socket, or even pliers to disconnect the terminals from the battery, and there is a core charge. I also purchased an adjustable wrench and 2 funnels.
I was going to purchase a battery from Walmart, but the only battery that was reasonably priced at $54 was 585 CCA, and the car requires 590CCA. While 5 cold cranking amps shouldn’t make a difference in starting the car, it could, and a refurbished battery is usually pretty near a new battery for about half the price. If it lasts a month, saving $30 today is important to me.
I was waiting for the bus with my Walmart purchases. All the used battery places that were open on Sunday were opening at the time I was looking at 9am. No one was answering the phone. I kept cycling through until Canos Used Batteries answered and told me they had a battery for $30.
When I returned home I put the contents of the Walmart bag in the back seat. Before completely disconnecting the battery I made sure there was no corrosion on the terminals and that the terminals were tight. Oftentimes what appears to be a dead battery is actually just a loose connection. I didn’t think that was the case here but it doesn’t hurt to make sure.
Canos is pretty close to where I’m at, about a mile walking, and I discovered walking 2 miles with a battery is labor intensive.
When I returned I discovered the coolant level was not as low as I initially thought. There was barely any coolant in the reservoir but it only took about a half gallon to reach the fill line. Oil was more than a quart low, maybe 2 (added oil from 5 quart jug) and it was awfully dirty even after adding the fresh oil.
The car turned over right away and idled a little rough, but it sounds pretty decent when you give it some gas. Who knows how old the gas is?
I opened up the hood and inspected the top side with the engine running. There was nothing notable visually or auditorily. I crouched down to look beneath the vehicle and saw fluid leaking from towards the rear passenger side of the engine. I knew it was coming from the water pump. I reached under and put my fingers in the fluid to confirm it was coolant.
I went to youtube and watched a video. I knew there would be a lot to take off to get to it. I was waiting to find out if the tensioner was spring loaded or if it was bolt tensioned. There came a point in the video where the guy started talking about timing and took off a component that seemed unrelated. I went to a different video and discovered the water pump is on the timing chain (balancing chain) not on the belt. This is completely foreign to me and I’m more than a little bit intimidated by the prospect of the job. The video I’ve watched so far has not given me a very good idea of this tool I need to hold the chain in place while I remove the water pump.
The other problem is I have less than $100, waiting on my stimulus check which was supposed to have been sent on the 6th which is being sent to my daughter’s mothers house and I’m hoping I’ll be able to direct deposit it through a picture. I have to be out of where I’m staying at 8am Friday and I don’t get paid from work until Friday. If I had the money I would go buy the tools and the part and change it here but I don’t have the money.
When I returned from Walmart today there was a sticker that read violation no registration, that warned me the car could be towed within 48 hours. I was completely blown away because the car is parked on private property. I called the towing company listed on the sticker and explained that I purchased the car only hours before this sticker was placed on the car. He told me to schedule an appointment online with DMV and to put the appointment notice in the window of the car. I was still blown away by the idea that a car could be towed while parked on private property and I still am.
I purchased insurance with some help and went to the DMV. I can get a moving permit to drive the car for a limited time if I have insurance. When I arrived at the DMV there was a line outside to use the kiosks. I found out this was not the line to access services. There was a roped off section with DMV employees. I was told you have to get there on Saturday before 5am to get a ticket, and during the week it is by appointment only. Since I already set an appointment, I also know that the earliest appointment is in April. Fortunately, he told me they do provide moving permits for walk ups during the week. He also told me that if I have everything together they may do my registration and plates on that day. I can’t imagine passing smog testing with a bad water pump.
I walked away in disbelief that a tow company can essentially steal your car from your property because you don’t have a plate displayed and their DMV is 3 months behind. Who the fuck are people electing to run such a shit show? I suppose when all your attention is directed towards race, gender, sexuality, and nonsense rhetoric, it’s easy for incompetent people to neglect your interests right in front of your faces.
I went to the office depot and made copies of my bill of sale, insurance, and appointment with the DMV. Then I looked up the time the state provides for registering a newly purchased vehicle and found out it is 30 days. I displayed the documents in my window and wrote a note that I have 30 days to register a vehicle.
This was a bad bet based on my position, because if I buy a bad car which I have done I am fucked. Yes, if I had the money I could fix the car but I do not and may not have the money until I have no place to take the car.
—
Update
Maybe premature to say I didn’t lose but the water pump doesn’t seem as big a deal as I initially thought. Watched a few videos and I’m comfortable with my ability to change it. In fact I bought a few tools and I’m a faceplate, a sprocket stabilizer install and 5 bolts away from changing the water pump. I won’t have enough money for the parts until I’m paid on Friday.
I have to be out at 8am but the woman I am renting from agreed to allow me to finish fixing my car on her slab. I procured my moving permit from the DMV and it is valid for 4 months. I’m also changing the air filter, changing the oil, and changing the spark plugs. My hope is that the check engine light will go off and I can pass emissions. In that case I’ll be able to get my car registered and get my plates. If not, I’m confident I can leave with the moving permit.
As I mentioned the idle is a little rough and there is a tick at higher rpms. If I’m lucky, changing the air filter, oil, and plugs will straighten this out. If I’m not, I’m going to put about $200 more dollars into this car, have about $200 left, and have a car that barely runs. LOL. I need that laugh, my sense of humor has been slipping lately.
I will know in about 48 hours where I’m at with this gamble that I’m doubling down on.
It’s official I am fucked. On a positive note I successfully changed the water pump without dropping any bolts into the timing cover, a feat I attribute primarily to luck, but still a source of pride nonetheless given the circumstances. But, the problem still remains. I knew it as soon as the car began to warm up and the heater was blowing cold. It’s almost certainly the head gasket.
I’m living out of a car that I cannot drive far, and probably will not be able to sell. I have only myself to blame for the bad decision. I’m in a Walmart parking lot where I will try to take a nap. There is a security truck so we’ll see how that plays out.
A car that is less than 8 years old for 1100 seemed like much too good a deal to pass up. I’d also seen cars go for low prices that I felt like I should have bid on. I probably should have. I’m disgusted with myself and I don’t know what I’m going to do.
—
The next morning I intended to drive to Walmart from the parking lot I slept in. As I drove the temperature increased and stopped about an 1\8th of the way below half. I decided to keep driving and drove about 4 miles and it maintained this temperature.
I decided to take it on the I15 south and it maintained the temperature. However, I was going about 75 to 80mph and took my foot off of the accelerator. When I went to accelerate again it would not accelerate. Initially I thought I lost compression, pulled to the shoulder with my hazards on and proceeded to the off ramp.
I was looking for a parking lot when a woman asked me if I was limited to a certain mph, she said miles but I knew what she meant. She followed me to a parking lot and explained she had a Malibu and it was a computer problem. She started talking about locking the doors with the key but I stopped her because my ignition key doesn’t work on the car doors.
When I restarted the car it functioned as it usually does. Another issue I have is it won’t start on the first try. I’ll turn the key and it will crank but won’t turn over. Like it isn’t getting fuel. After a few tries, sometimes after putting it in neutral, other times putting it in neutral and rolling it, then it will start up.
The cooling system seems solved. When I drained the coolant there were metal specs in the pan as if the previous owners used a radiator stop leak product. Maybe I needed to drive the car with the new pump to clear it. Idk.
After driving about 15 miles in the city with the heat off I was at a stop light and temp started climbing but went down to 1\8th below half after I put the heat on. I should probably try to sell it.
1/2021 The Gamble Continued
I’d much rather be creating lessons for my curriculum than writing about my troubles or my life as the two seem synonymous. But it is what it is, the circumstances and the visible opportunities I harvest from them.
The gamble was me betting that an 1100 dollar 2012 Malibu I bought at an auction would be a decent car. A stupid gamble because I had 1500 and had about another 1000 coming in a week through stimulus money and my job. Given those circumstances and knowing how bad I need a reliable car it is a stupid time to gamble on a car without being able to thoroughly inspect it while it is running and without being able to drive it. Not a bad gamble but the timing was bad.
The car’s first issue was the water pump.
My rent was up the day I would get paid and my stimulus didn’t arrive before that. I had 1 day to buy the tools and parts on the bus and tune the car up. I accomplished this feat but when I was finished the car still overheated. At that point I didn’t know what to do but I had a few options.
I woke up this morning intent on selling the car. I left the parking lot and the car was no longer overheating.
I stopped at Walmart and then a rest area bike trail. One option is to sell the car, rent a room, hope to get more hours at a job I hate, and then buy another car.
Option two is to take this car and leave Nevada as I intended to do originally. With some modification since I discovered the miles I have on this car are limited. I intended to stop in Denver to see a female friend I met in 2017 and either stay or go elsewhere.
I went with option 2.
I cannot live like that, in a place of almost no satisfaction. It was having a profound influence on my behavior exacerbated by the recurring difficulties created by people whom I’ve rented rooms from. Given the amount of work that has been available at a job that is terrible, and the unavailability of supplemental work there’s no telling how long I would be in that situation. If I average $250 per week and pay $500 a month in rent and then have 400 to $500 in monthly expenses, I could be there for months breaking even. The covid fear is higher there than in other places. I considered starting a meetup but it is difficult to find a venue and a difficult place to generate interest in substance. It was a bad place for me and produced a bad draw on my behavior, although there were many positive causal interactions. The unpleasant experiences I’ve had there do not represent the people there as a whole, where many were well mannered, kind, respectful, and helpful.
I didn’t sell the car and decided to take a chance of getting stuck on the desolate stretch of highway between Vegas and Flagstaff.
The car has been running at 1\8th below half the entire time. It lacks good acceleration and has a bitch of a time up some hills but it seems to be improving. I started driving to Phoenix because I saw an abundance of gig work there. I typically make more money, work less, and enjoy the work a little more compared to traditional employment opportunities. Maybe I’ll print up some cards to hand out to attract attention to my website although in Wisconsin and Denver that method of promotion failed to yield any interest. I need to start a meetup but Phoenix isn’t an ideal spot for any sort of promotion. The abundance of elderly people probably coincides with greater covid paranoia and restrictions, and it doesn’t seem like a good place for that. Then again, it isn’t everyone.
I may not go to Phoenix, but my car has taken me to flagstaff. I don’t know how long it will last but if I can get 5000 miles before the engine completely loses compression this should be adequate if I can find regular gig work to save enough money to buy another car and finish my curriculum. From there I’ll figure it out: where I’m at and where I need to be.
While at the hotel in Flagstaff I was browsing CL in different locations. In the Austin gig section I responded to an ad looking for participants in a documentary about voices that are not represented by the mainstream media and how to solve America’s problems. I responded and the producer agreed to interview. With my car in the sorry shape that it is in I decided to go to Austin, TX.
I’ve driven the car about 1300 miles. Sometimes I drive it and there seems like nothing is wrong. Primarily city driving or going down hill. Lol. Starting the car and driving up hill or in higher gears the problems become apparent.
I was driving the car in drive on the interstate. I was roughly 50 miles out of Tuscon and the car went into reduced engine power mode. I wasn’t worried because before I turned the car off and the computer reset. This time when I shut the car off and turned it back on as soon as I shifted to drive it went back into reduced engine power mode. Tried turning it off and restarting it a few more times with the same result.
I decided to disconnect the battery. As I did I was thinking ok mother fucker, (lol) you knew this shit was a possibility now you might have it. As I disconnected the terminals I thought if it didn’t work I’d get to Tucson and take a greyhound to Austin. Whether the documentary will experience wide circulation or not, it is the best opportunity I have to advance my ideas.
After I disconnected the battery I was good and back on the road.
Last night I arrived at my destination. I posted a CL ad seeking gig work because I need money. I’m hoping I’ll receive a direct deposit for the hours I worked last week. It is possible although unlikely that those hours were for the previous salaried pay period. This is unlikely because two weeks ago I only received payment for the hours I worked and Daniel sent me the remaining portion of the salary via Zelle. I worked the previous week for those hours so I should have some money coming on Friday.
After checking CL gigs this morning there was nothing of interest. My attention turned to my car. I thought I may have had a bad O2 sensor. Some of the symptoms seemed consistent. Yesterday I almost bought and changed it, mainly because one of the symptoms described a surge of power. In drive if I put the pedal to the floor it won’t accelerate and then suddenly the rpms would shoot up to about 4k.
There was a gentleman from Vegas who offered me services on the car. I told him I changed the water pump and described my symptoms. He told me I may have a bad camshaft or crankshaft sensor. This morning I went to Advance Auto. Advance has become my preferred auto parts store because they had the water pump sprocket holder in stock when I needed it, but I’ll still use other parts stores when there is a cheaper price on a part. The guy told me they didn’t have their engine diagnostic code checker. I thought he was lying to me, but then he told me to go to Jiffy Lube and that they do it for free.
I went to Jiffy Lube and there was a sign that read no inspections. This probably meant no state vehicle inspections but I misinterpreted the sign to mean no diagnostic testing.
Finally I went to autozone and was given a code that the cam and crankshaft position correlation was off. Autozone didn’t have the part but O’reilly next door did. I bought the camshaft sensor but when I got in the car there were codes that the crankshaft sensor wasn’t correlating with either camshaft sensor, so it seemed like maybe it was the crankshaft sensor not the camshaft sensor. I exchanged the part. When I looked up the symptoms I’ve been experiencing it was more consistent with a faulty camshaft sensor than crankshaft sensor. I exchanged the part again and installed the A side.
I haven’t driven the car yet but after installing it, it did turn over right away whereas sometimes it cranks and I have to stop and try it a few times before it turns over. Another $50 gamble, and time will tell whether or not it’s rewarding.
—
It’s official, this car is in a state that I am unable to repair in my present situation. I changed the cam sensor, cleaned the variable valve timing solenoids, changed the crankshaft sensor, and the only thing left is the timing chain. I could change it but not in a parking lot. It would take me at least 2 days. The person who I’ve been corresponding with from Vegas calls the car a ticking time bomb, where if the chain jumps a tooth it is going to do serious damage to the engine and the car will be rendered undrivable.
I’m supposed to be doing an interview today for a documentary on political voices that are not represented by the msm, what’s wrong with America, and how to solve the problems. It was scheduled for 9am this morning, and it is half the reason I’m here.
Last night I received a text asking me if I could do it next week, the creators claimed they did not have a ride. I told them I can meet closer to their location or pick them up. Then he replied he wasn’t feeling good but asked if we could do it in the afternoon and he provided a new location. I agreed.
Today I woke up to a text that he will contact me around 8:30am this morning to provide me with the time and as I anticipated, it is 8:44 and I haven’t heard from him. I’ll contact him at 9:00 to 9:30 to see if he has time if I’m not contacted before then.
The second reason I came here is I was lured by CL gigs, where surveying the gig section over a few days there seemed like there was a lot of gig work. There isn’t, and the few there are that I’ve responded to have yielded no work.
As usual, this trip is a blank mission and I am fucked in life.
Not sure what my next move is. I only know I’m not returning to Wisconsin, and I can’t stay anywhere where I can’t make money.
Recently I wrote the exception to having ample amounts of time and money as a determinant of happiness is when you’re able to earn money doing what you want to do. Time becomes irrelevant because work is inherently satisfying. Obviously that is where I’m trying to be but lack the means to reach that place.
For me there is no acceptable balance of time and money, where for example I could work 3 days per week 12 hour days and earn $1200 per week. This would be a good balance of time and money, where I’d have the means to provide for my needs and have money to do what I wanted to do in my free time, which is ample in this scenario. Even in such a situation I would not be content doing the work just to entertain myself with the time and money in my free time. Of course in this wildly unrealistic scenario I’d probably be alright because it would position me to do the work that I wanted to be doing. Otherwise I’m not content with the entertainment and I cannot ignore what is going on around me.
It seems I’m approaching a point in life where I’m tired of struggling and contending with these people and these circumstances. I’m wasted and fall behind in study and refinement of material because my mind is occupied by some bullshit going with a shit car I’m driving and living out of, or how I’m going to make money to get me through the following week or other bullshit. I’ve gotten what I need personally out of life in terms of understanding and development. To see not only the world, human beings, and the universe as it is, but knowing existentially what can be, and what likely is.
I live life with very little fear because I can usually foresee the possibilities and in considering possible outcomes I am accepting of those outcomes no matter how they impact my interests. The basis for all fear is uncertainty and the inability to accept outcomes.
I been dealing with this fuck shit for too long. Just sick of: if aint one thing its a mother fucking nother.
It’s going to be what it’s going to be. This car isn’t likely to last too much longer and without some progress that I probably cannot create I don’t anticipate I’m going to last much longer after that.
This isn’t the culmination of this gamble on this car going bad, but the underlying general thoughts and feelings I have about being in this hell for 38 years, which I’m expressing as I consider the bleak and uncertain future I am approaching.
–
I did the interview which lasted about 2.5 hours. There were points where I was articulate but I was very choppy and overall shitty for the most part. We did about 2 hours and at the end he told me the entire documentary between myself and others he only expected to be about 20 minutes. He did tell me he would send me the raw footage but I need more like this because oral communication skills are suffering. While this is partially a product of losing familiarity with some of my material, it’s also a product of social isolation and infrequent speaking opportunities.
My mood may change depending on my circumstances but I wanted to keep those reflections of the underlying darkness at the end of the previous break.
Where am I going?
I found this picture and recently made this same mistake again so I thought I’d include it. In Austin I didn’t have a key for my doors. The lock is not the same as the ignition key. I accidently locked my doors and had to smash out the window with a rock. Months later in DFW I bought a window from a junk yard and did another incredibly stupid thing.
The window from the junkyard included the molding, and replacing the rear quarter window is very simple. You disassemble the door and there is one bolt that holds the hard piece of molding that separates the rear window from the main window. You can take the bolt out, slide the molding piece forward, and then insert the window with the new piece of molding and then you’re done. My dumb ass removed the glass from the molding and thought I would just put the new glass into the old molding. This wouldn’t be a problem except that the glass from the broken window is stuck in the old molding. So I had to spend probably 2 hours scraping all the glass and adhesive from the old molding to put the new glass into it.
Recently, I locked my keys in the car again. Fortunately there is a service called pop a lock that for $40 will come and open your car for you. You really only have to use it once because after seeing them do it you can make the tool they use. $40 was about what I was willing to pay since that’s what it costs to get a replacement from junkyard. I may have paid $60 but over $60 I was going to bust the window and replace the window again.
1/2021 Texas/DFW
I couldn’t find work in Austin so I looked in the DFW CL and found a person who was advertising a few weeks of work at a new hotel construction. I left for DFW to take advantage of that opportunity to make money to change my timing chain.
–
I would like to be writing something of substance right now, but my days are occupied with menial tasks in a job to make money. The work is easy and the people are cool.
As I mentioned in the gamble continued, I completed the interview in Austin. There’s about 2 hours of footage and at least some of it should be usable. The documentarians only intend to use a very small portion and said they’d send me the rest, so I will be posting portions as soon as that’s done.
I missed a sexual opportunity this weekend but maybe not. The chic I was texting with on the dating app told me she stopped drinking. I asked why and she said it caused her to make some stupid and bad decisions. I joked that I wanted to be her first stupid and bad decision of 2021. She said as long as I wasn’t lame in the sack she wouldn’t regret it. She said she smokes weed and I confirmed that I did too. Afterwards she said we could do that if I need an icebreaker.
I figured her for a 2 but that comment made me think she might have been a 3. I explained the numbers as it relates to my investment of time.
1: is looking for a man’s attention, devotion, and time, which adds to her self worth, covers her insecurities, and gives her good feelings from the perception that she is achieving progress towards her idea of happiness. A woman’s and even men’s idea of happiness typically contains a spousal figure. The woman usually molds the man into the character of her fantasy. Many men seem to pursue a mother figure, who will impose limitations on their behavior and socially this is an idea that’s promoted that “she’s the boss”. I typically avoid the type ones because it’s an investment of time that doesn’t yield what I’m looking for which is socializing and sex without expectations of a mutually exclusive future. Values are different.
2: I’m usually aiming at category 2s. 2s want to socialize, be entertained, establish some comfort with you and then get smashed. If we both enjoy ourselves we’ll do it again.
3s: Are women who are very content with their life and are just looking for sex. They’ll meet you exclusively for sex. Very rare but they are out there.
After explaining this to her to see if she was trying to 3 or trying to 2, She responded that I got it all figured out and said I go from city to city hollering at local girls on dating apps.
I explained to her that I usually only mess with one woman in an area, and went on to tell her that I maintain good standing with the 2s I meet. I still talk and text with the chic in Denver and in Seattle, although they’re probably growing inpatient with me.
The chic from Seattle (Michelle) wanted me to come stay with her for a little while. She offered to help me get out there with her stimulus money. I’d have spent a weekend with her drinking and doing freaky stuff which is what she wanted. The problem of course was I didn’t have the confidence in my car to make it out there and then make it somewhere else to be productive.
I was planning on seeing the chic in Denver after I fixed my water pump and left Vegas. 1, because I can make money in Denver, and 2: because I can probably promote my material in Denver, and most importantly, it moves me away from the west coast and that is important to me. My car wasn’t running well enough for me to be confident that I wouldn’t get stuck out there, and of course now I know I need to change the timing chain.
She may have still been a 3, but lost interest because I implied that I don’t wear condoms. I don’t, I pull out to avoid babies and I avoid women with risky lifestyles (typically needle users) to avoid STDs. The only significant stds are hiv and herpes where the rest can be cured with a pill. I’m also someone who has never had an STD, and never produced a baby on a pull out which I’m disciplined in performing. Even contracting herpes just means you’re limited to sex with other people who have herpes, so you kind of enter an exclusive sexual market. Lol. It could have been the condoms if she was a 3, because if she was a 3 nothing else I wrote would have mattered.
Otherwise she was an undercover 1 and didn’t like the idea that at some point I may refer to her as the Dallas chic.
She may have been a 2 who mistook my honesty for someone who is overtly full of himself and didn’t think she’d enjoy herself in my presence.
I won’t know, but I was disappointed that she was already willing, and keeping it real went wrong. Maybe it did and maybe it didn’t if it was about condoms. The last chic I got up with in Milwaukee was cool and I would have seen her a few more times before I left but she was adamant about condoms. After the first time I wasn’t going to go back because of the condoms thing. There was a moment when her head game was really good. We talked and I went back to exchange oral. Of course she bait and switched me and was delivering some mediocre head unlike what she did the first time I was there. I had to hit it again with a condom. My performance was much better so the second encounter was gratifying to my ego, but I never went back to her again because I don’t like condoms. Still, she was cool chic outside of that socially.
–
My planet fitness membership for the gym in Vegas can only be canceled in person or by certified mail. I thought it made more sense to upgrade my membership to be able to use all PF locations since even if I cancel this membership and get a new one, I have to pay the 40 dollar annual fee and would probably have to pay it again if I get a new membership for a different location. Unfortunately it won’t allow me to upgrade, probably because I had the multiple location membership years ago and stopped paying it. I went to the gym almost everyday for about a month before leaving Vegas and my strength and shape just began to return.
I have the money to rent a room but it’s difficult to justify the expense of $150 to $200 per week when I’m only making $500 a week or so and I don’t know what the situation is going to be like in consideration of the last 2 rooms I’ve rented. I’m thinking I can get a hotel Saturday for $40 to relax and refresh. That’s what I intended to do and then have the POF chic come over, and hopefully I can find a replacement before then.
Otherwise maybe I’ll shower twice a week at a pilot and rent a cheap hotel once per week until I finish this job. I may have to get a gym membership but I also need time to continue developing lessons and writing my material as a book. I still need to figure that out.
I still need to change my timing chain and I’ll probably also change my headgasket since I’ll be most of the way there. My car runs cool which is an indication that the headgasket isn’t healthy and the car was probably driven overheated by the previous owners because of the water pump. I have a friend who lives about an hour from here who told me he’d let me use his driveway to do it.
Still a mess, trying to work through it and hoping this car stays running until this job is over and I can change the chain.
—
Last night while I was in a parking lot a person moved quickly past my car and it appeared he had a gun in his hand. Upon further inspection it was actually his cell phone, where the light from the phone at a blurred glance appeared as reflective metal. It was interesting to me because unless you see a cell phone appear as a gun it can be difficult to imagine a cell phone appearing as a gun.
-‘
I had a few thoughts concerning Covid 19 after a pawn shop owner asked me if I had a mask. He was actually the second pawn shop owner enforcing a mask policy. I visited a pawn shop the previous day with the same result. Same result in terms of the item I was seeking and enforcement of a mask policy. Years ago I bought a Milwaukee drill from a pawn shop for about $40, but these pawn shops in Texas are selling used shit at damn near retail prices.
In addition to these pawn shops, the Walmart whose parking lot I temporarily call home (lol) had security at the door who informed me I have to wear a mask in the store.
While this may seem standard, previous establishments in the Dallas FortWorth area did not ask me to.
For the first few days I thought I was in Texas.
A place where liberty asserts that each individual can decide their own risk so long as in doing so they don’t increase anyone’s else’s risk of an undesirable outcome.
Where people have the common sense to understand which segments of the population are at risk for a severe outcome if infected with the flu, and can understand when another virus creates the same symptoms across the same segments of the population that this virus is of comparable strength, the distinction being that covid is more contagious, and the flu is more dangerous to children. 99% of the population will experience varying degrees of sickness and recovery, while less than 1% of the sickest people, typically those with about a year left to live, will die if infected.
I thought Texans had the common sense to reason that if we didn’t take excessive measures to protect the weakest members of the population from the flu who will die if infected, it doesn’t make sense to take excessive precautions to protect the vulnerable portion of the population from a virus of roughly equal strength.
I thought maybe Texans could see that these restrictions are a product of the exaggerated danger being peddled to serve the interests of the media, in attracting attention to their broadcasts since danger creates concern, concern attracts attention, and the media makes more money the more attention they attract.
This exaggerated danger is peddled by politicians because 1: it presents an opportunity for them to improve their image to the public through the presentation of concern and compassion which are qualities that are valued by the public; albeit more in idea than in practice. 2: because the exaggerated danger and restrictions serve the interest of certain industries, who are their donors, friends, and the ultimate deciders of public policy.
I thought maybe Texans might be able to understand how those who are involved in the study of viruses whose opinions control the minds of the masses have an interest in the opportunity to be in the spotlight and feel important by exaggerating the danger. Especially since the media selects experts to provide opinions based on how that expert’s opinions fit the narrative that achieves the highest ratings. Experts who are paid to tell you objective truth are contaminated by moral ideas that if they present the virus as being more dangerous their interpretation could save someone’s life, or more likely extend it by 1 to 12 months as they linger in this world in diminished capacity.
Forget about my misconceptions concerning Texas. I thought that as depraved of integrity that this country was founded on and has proceeded with, that the rule of law would still protect the liberty that the founders embedded in the constitution, afforded to all people to protect themselves from the republic they were creating.
I thought someone involved in law would recognize that a precedent invoking the use of emergency power to allow the public to protect itself from a virus with a 30% random fatality rate, is much different than a virus with a less than 1% fatality rate that is not randomly deadly and only kills the weakest members of the population. More importantly, I thought the courts, with intelligent people who understand basic arithmetic would be capable of weighing the evidence quantitatively, as opposed to allowing opinions about the evidence to be the evidence. That’s the most disheartening aspect of the covid insanity, because all we have is the courts, and if we’ve lost the courts as clearly we have, there’s no limit to the tyranny that can be unleashed on an ignorant public to serve the powerful interests in this country.
My experience is limited to the DFW area and has exceeded my expectations so far in the limited interaction that I’ve had with people.
On tour bus tales I heard a story about a famous country songwriter. He was with his newly divorced ex wife at a bar I think shortly after breaking his neck. There was a man who was interested in his ex wife and was berating him. He was patient with the man, but the man perceived his patience as him being weak or afraid and eventually crossed a line and the writer had to let him know. The man wielding a knife challenged him to a fight in the bathroom. The writer walked into the bathroom and shot him in the face but did not kill him.
The country song writer claimed the man grabbed a gun before he went into the bathroom, but there was no gun. It just sounds better in court to say you shot a man in the face who had a gun as opposed to shooting a man in the face who only had a knife. To me there isn’t much difference because if he doesn’t shoot him he’s going to be subjected to great bodily harm or death with a knife the same as with a gun.
More interesting to me is the jury found him not guilty. It was the right decision. Why? Because here is a man with a woman he just divorced with a gun in his pocket who allows the man to get away with effectively bullying him, and did not seek a confrontation with the man nor did he try to intimidate or use the weapon to harm him. There is no intent to cause any harm. Only after the other man escalates the situation and the country song writer is stuck between relinquishing his dignity or facing down an able bodied man with a knife who he had no intention of harming, does he fire a shot to protect his person and dignity. I liked Texas for that outcome.
What I liked even more than this is the man who was charged with beating to death the pedophile who molested his son. A jury found him not guilty.
While there are many crimes, even most crimes, that are necessitated by circumstances or are laws that impose more imposition than they prevent which is immoral, sex crimes do not. Sexual assault, well actual sexual assault (actual being forced to participate in a sexual act not an unwanted touch from someone who didn’t know his or her advance was unwanted) is without justification. Outside pedophilia sexual assault is unjustifiable because any sexual desire can be fulfilled by supplying a person with something of enough value for them to participate in that sexual act with you. Whether it be their desired behavior from you, money, or some other material you can gain through an investment of time.
As harm goes I have no sympathy for those who harm children. Although the pedophile has no outlet for his desire, there is no room for the expression of his desire because it is inherently harmful or imposing. The bigger problem is that your value of the act is greater than your value of a child’s well being, where the act feels better than what should be the low you experience in the idea of harming a child. I don’t have a problem with you being beaten to death even if the law hasn’t caught up to the severity of the offense.
More unfortunate for the pedophile is that assistance to change his values is limited to psychology that doesn’t acknowledge objective morality or how the mind perceives reality as objects in motion, and creates assignments to these objects of cause or effect, true or false, right or wrong, and value as measured in the feelings that objects in motion produce, to determine the motion of the being. They don’t understand the subconscious processing of the decision making process, or cycle of mood. Unfortunately it would be up to him to change his values. Still I like the sentiment that if you harm children we will kill you.
A conflicting conclussion is I think many non-pedophilia sexual assault and especially sexual harrassment incidents are overblown. In general, even for legitmate cases of sexual assault which are unjustifiable, the impact and significance is overblown.
Victims are exploited by groups and media personalities who have an interest in exploiting the person’s experience for material gain. Victims are bombarded with expectations of how they’re supposed to feel and internalize these expectations allowing the incident to be much more significant to their lives than it ought to be. You had probably on average an uncomfortable half hour of life and you allow this experience to define who you are as a person. Of course there is the motivation that comes from the attention they receive and the sympathy and encouragement they receive from others. For some victims indoctrinated ideas about sex itself is responsible for the prolonged mental anguish victims subject themselves to. For many victims the experience becomes an excuse for all their shortcomings. This is a controversial although often true opinion about sexual assault victims, who express about the incident mostly what they’re told they should feel and how significant the effect should be on their life. They’re surrounded by image promoters who use the person’s experience to show others they’re compassionate through their support of the individual.
Think about a child who scrapes their knee. If the parent laughs and jokes about it, or if the parent emphasizes to the child that they’re okay or that they’re tough the child will typically adopt that position on the matter. The incident becomes insignificant because that’s what the child perceives others as perceiving it.
Conversely, if the parent dramatizes the incident the child will also adopt that position, will cry excessively, and this is due in part to the child being convinced that the injury is worse than it is which can make it hurt more. More specifically the child focuses more on the injury and is more aware of the pain. Secondly it facilitates social ends in perceiving something has happened to them that is worthy of attention. The child will often solicit the attention of others who will provide that attention.
I’m not reducing sexual assault to a child scraping their knee, and I also find it to be one of the most dispicable crimes because it isn’t a crime necessitated by circumstances. I do believe people’s interests in victims of sexual assault is responsible for causing the event to be more profound and impacting of the individual’s life than it otherwise would be.
I’ve wandered off topic from Covid, but I thought I’d express some of what I liked about Texas, while stating that even Texas has ignorantly given up liberty because the people don’t know how to do a basic comparative risk assessment and instead accept opinion as fact.
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It’s about 3pm on Sunday. I purchased a reduced price sandwich at Walmart that proved to be below my very low standards of food quality and taste.
This morning after checking out of the hotel and cleaning out my car I watched a few videos on changing my timing chain, some of which I’ve watched previously. I made a list of the tools I need to change the timing chain that I do not already possess. I’m becoming more familiar with the process and have very few points of uncertainty. After I deposit my check tomorrow I’ll order the parts.
Friday night I went by my friend from Milwaukee (West Allis) had a few drinks and we were going to go out somewhere but it didn’t materialize. At one point I began to try to teach him SCA and he had a structure with 4 pillars which promised to facilitate a symbolic representation of the four subconscious assignments. Unfortunately he was either too drunk or uninterested to grasp or acknowledge the concepts.
Saturday, I rented a room. Being how unsuccessful I’d been trying to pull a POF chic for the night it was unlikely I was going to find somebody on the night. I tried with the expected results using traditional methods.
There aren’t many distinctions between these women. You can read 1000 profiles so similar you’d think they were written by about a half dozen different people.
Among the popularly valued cliches is no games just keep it real. The problem is women can’t stand to hear real shit. Part of the reason I posted my investment of time categories on my profile is to weed out the crowd of women who can’t stand reality. Lately that net has become more like a barrier.
Most women on dating apps are undercover 2s. They want to go out or hang out, and have sex with you. Despite having this intention, most will not admit to this intention prior to meeting someone. Many of the same ones with the no games keep it real profile cliches.
The difficulty in different approaches, or efforts to 2 through the conversation that develops between message exchanges is these chics have no conversation. Their whole perception of reality is based on a mixture of common misconceptions that funnel their likes into a few different genres of goods and entertainment. They don’t know the difference between a fact and an opinion, they only know the difference between what they like or do not like. They don’t know the difference between consistency and contradiction. Two things can exist in their minds despite one of the things causing the other thing to not be true because the thing causes the person to feel good. In this the subconscious mind likely prevents the conscious acknowledgement of the relationship between the 2 contradictory objects to preserve the value of the objects, which is a function of denial. I’m supposed to be interested in someone whose goals and ideas are based on a perception of reality that is false?
The most important aspect of intelligence is honesty. If I’m going to hang out with you I at least want you to be able to stomach some real shit, and I also want to know your true intentions. I definitely don’t want to invest time and money into you and you’re on some 1 shit.
I was a little side tracked here in providing explanations, but the point is, I don’t care to go through the typical get to know you process, because there isn’t a whole lot of interesting substance to you. I can lie a little to advance an interest but I can’t lie a lot. Eventually you call it negging, when all I’ve done is told you the truth and probably pulled a couple jokes out of it.
My shortcomings as far as results are concerned whether with women or otherwise isn’t a product of not understanding women or human beings, its a product of integrity where if I have to become something else to get those results there will be a negative feelings resulting from a loss of self worth for mirroring values instead of asserting my own, and depending on the consequence to the woman concerning the deception there would be an additional bad feeling (morally) for using deception. The value of sex is not greater than the negative feeling that will occur for distorting her reality, and not greater than the feelings of maintaining my integrity.
Dating apps for me are like fishing in the fall, you typically make a lot of casts before you get any action(fall fishing may be better in different regions, but fall fishing in Wisconsin is much less exciting than summer fishing). The point is to use the right bait to get the action that you want.
I was only pissed off by one response and mainly because she blocked me after she sent it so I couldn’t respond.
I messaged her 2 days ago asking her if she wanted to get on some 2 or 3 shit with me and have a better night on Saturday than she otherwise would have. I followed this message up by telling her I might be going to a bar later with my guy and if she had plans to kick it with one of her buddy’s (had multiple pictures of her drinking and hanging out with friends) maybe we could meet up. The first message also directed her to read my profile.
This morning she messaged me back that she was good on that BS. Of course I wasn’t on no BS, I was on some real shit and just because she wasn’t on it doesn’t make it BS. I don’t have a problem with her being good on it, there’s a lot of 1s and even more fronting 1s out there.
The issue I had is she sent another message calling me crazy and saying I needed help. I’d contend that she needs help, like help to justify why anything I wrote constitutes craziness. As I’ve provided in this entry, my approach is completely consistent with my values and a solid basis of reasoning. There’s nothing crazy about it but had she not blocked me I was going to ask her what her basis is for calling me crazy? She wouldn’t have been able to provide one that would have met the definition of the word crazy. In fact it would have probably begun with “you think women are” or “will” insert intentions stated or implied from my message or profile. She probably wouldn’t be able to distinguish a fact from an opinion, where the fact that is the meaning of the word crazy would be lost, and her opinions based largely on the difference between my values and hers would serve as a fact to her that she was right that I was crazy.
Women understand the market value of female consent, not monetarily, but the difference in availability between a consenting male and a consenting female. Not to mention the ingrained misconceptions about sex and promiscuity that also contaminate women’s behavior as they seek to promote a conservative image based on social pressures. These social pressures exist as a product of the misconceptions about sex and promiscuity, which have their origins in deities created by man to control men, but also in general societal shaming that tends to be a product of other dislike. By other dislike I mean a man or a woman may dislike a woman or be jealous of the woman and in the absence of any substantive criticism they’ll say she’s a slut, a ho, or some other derogatory words that represents promiscuity. Societal pressure also persuades women not to be too openly promiscuous because it may impact their long term relationship goals, where insecure men are less likely to commit to a woman if she is known to have had a lot of previous sexual partners.
Women, even fat ugly women can find someone to have sex with any day of the week. When I’m talking about a 1, although I described a common form of a 1 in the categories, I’m basically talking about a woman trying to get something more than sex for sex. It ranges from attention and commitment to money and outright prostitution. In many respects, traditional relationships are indirectly prostitution.
Anyway, you take enough shots eventually you make one. But it’s a little rough when it’s been awhile since you’ve made a shot.
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I reordered the website promotional cards that were partially distributed in Brookfield, Wauwatosa, Greenfield, and with my greeting cards. In the previous effort the cards failed to attract any worthwhile attention. I need to put together a better website that’s more engaging visually, as well as a better home page, perhaps one asking questions. I suppose I need to put my material together into something that is easier for people to understand. I also need an introductory summary pitch of the material itself, and although it is simple there is a great breadth of subject matter, presentation, and application. One of the things I’m on is a lot of people’s whole purpose.
Idk. I’m finishing out this week, changing my timing chain, and then I’ll figure out what comes next.
Maybe I should have tried to rent a room, but the truth is I didn’t have money for a room last week, albeit there was probably 70 to 100 dollars that I may have been able to trim off my week’s expenses. Even if I did it’s very difficult to justify a $200 weekly expense. Some would consider that a necessity, but I consider it a luxury from this position. I believe I started the week last week with about $500. I paid $60 after paying my phone bill with nearly all spending being investments. Had I rented a room I’d have had to go without shit I needed. This week too I’ve already spent about $250 on parts for my car, gas, and business cards. I still need at least about $40 to $80 in tools.
Even in this, after I change my timing chain I might want to be up, regardless of how much it makes sense to work at least another week or until the job is done and go somewhere to promote or stay here and promote.
Few thoughts I had about my surroundings after work.
I showered at a pilot that was home to a Hitchcock-like flock of birds. More than a 1000. I was worried when they flew overhead because the sheer number of birds made it seem likely that at least 1 might have to shit, and it seemed possible that I was in danger of being shit on. I joked to myself that what they didn’t tell the employees is that at some point if you work there long enough you will be shit on on the trip to your car. Probably not, but I was calling the probably 2000 birds, a 100,000 birds and thought out of 100 trips there’s a decent chance you could be shit on. I’ve been shit on at least once by a bird and I was beneath more birds on my walk to the pilot than I have been in my entire life cumulatively. Some of those workers have been shit on.
While I was driving from the pilot to this week’s Walmart, a lane was merging from oncoming traffic from the left. I saw a jeep flash his brights. I saw another car that was nearly alongside me as the lane was reducing from 2 to 1. I presume he put his lights on to tell me to speed up. The problem is my timing chain is fucked up and I believe we were on an incline. I can’t speed up. First thing I thought was good mother fucker, that’s why you don’t wait until the last second to merge thinking the guy in front of me will speed up to let me in because the guy in front of you might not be able to speed up. Often more importantly, the guy behind you might not be able to stop quick enough to let you in. Look for opportunities to merge or position yourself to merge before the lane merges and you’re stuck between 2 cars and maybe almost cause an accident. (I don’t know how close he really was but it seemed he was almost on my side as the lane began to narrow.
—
Thankfully someone I knew who lives near where I’m working was willing to let me use his garage because changing the timing chain is not a job I could have done in the street. Not the first time at least.
I arrived at his house at 8:00am on Saturday. The disassembly began very smoothly until I needed to remove the belt tensioner and the motor mount bracket attached to the engine. I didn’t have a 15mm or an 18mm wrench, only sockets, and there wasn’t sufficient room to fit a ratchet and socket into the space. I gave my friend $20 to purchase the wrenches for me as he was going to Home Depot to purchase a space heater.
Before he returned with the wrenches, I carefully raised the engine to gain access to the bolts. I was apprehensive about raising the engine that high. I raised it in small intervals to ensure no wires or hoses were being stretched or pinched.
One of the difficulties I was having was positioning the engine to top dead center. I could find it by pushing a screwdriver through the spark plug hole, with the cam marks positioned at 10 and 2 O’clock but I didn’t know how to turn the crank with anything other than the crankshaft bolt, and I couldn’t remove the crank cam sprocket with the bolt on, and I couldn’t remove the crank sprocket for the balancing chain with the bolt on. I also couldn’t remove the crank bolt without turning the engine. I know now that I could have used the harmonic balancer to turn the engine but didn’t think about this at the time. Had I, this job wouldn’t have been half as difficult and stressful as it was.
Around 630 pm, I decided I wasn’t going to change the balancing chain. I replaced the guides but left the sprockets. The chain at some point moved meaning the marks were no longer lined up. This occurred when I was trying to change the sprockets. I was looking for a good stopping point and found it when Randy invited me in for a drink of Johnnie Walker Gold.
We drank the whole bottle. The first sip I had was perhaps the most amazing sip of alcohol I’ve ever had. I told him he was wasting his good alcohol by mixing it with cola, and he said it doesn’t taste that good, it’s no Shamrock shake. I usually drink scotch on ice, but he didn’t have ice and I’m glad he didn’t because JW gold was outstanding at room temperature undiluted.
Somewhere around 10pm, we finished the bottle. Then we took an Uber to uptown Dallas. There were some interesting stories, I had an altercation with some people on the street and with security.
The first place we went was this hotel that had a bar in it he wanted to go to. We walked into the bar which was a bar/restaurant and we walked right out. I was uncomfortable because it seemed like a lot of high end people, and when I’m drinking I don’t do well concealing where I came from.
We walked out and there were 3 women sitting outside the hotel. I think two of them are in hotel robes. We approached and struck up casual conversations with them. He sat down on the bench and started caressing the back of this woman’s neck. She was clearly uncomfortable and visually it looked pretty creepy. This kind of derailed the whole situation. One of the women said he was too close, not the woman he was touching one of her friends.
Maybe a different approach would have worked out better because we were having a good conversation with them before he sat down and started touching her. The woman who was standing walked away. She came back and we resumed conversation. Shortly afterwards hotel staff came and said they had a phone call. The women all got up and left.
At some club we went to he had this idea that he was going to buy 4 drinks and we were going to approach two women and give them the drinks. He ordered 4 long islands. Eventually we walked up to this table of 4 women and gave them the drinks. They didn’t want them. I get it, it’s like which 2 out of you 4 want to get roofied. Lol. One woman bought me a shot of a patron. I hate tequila but I accepted it. We engaged in some brief conversation but decided to leave.
He had a real aggressive approach that was uncomfortable to me, but I didn’t care too much. I wanted to sit down, have a few drinks, chop it up with him, and then we can see who’s looking and make a move from that point.
We got back to his house about 4am.
I woke up at 8:30am. I went out to the car and realized I was in a lot of trouble. I already installed the new tensioner on the balance chain and the balance chain was off the marks by many links.
I found a youtube video where a person showed that the tensioner could be reset. His tensioner was for a different vehicle and much different than mine but it showed me that it could be reset. For his, he had to pull the plunger out to reset it whereas for me I had to push it in and turn it to insert the pin. Mine was easier.
Once the tensioner was reset I removed all the guides, the chain, and the sprocket for the crankshaft on the balancing chain. The water pump sprocket, the intake sprocket and exhaust sprocket on the balancing chain I left alone. There wasn’t much wear and once I had the intake, exhaust, and crank sprockets in the correct position I didn’t want to fuck with em. I installed the new balancing chain and it was onto the main chain.
My cams were out of position but my crank was in the correct position. Without the chain on, I used the 24mm wrench to put my cams in the correct position.
Putting the chain on and ensuring the marks were aligned with the colored links wasn’t very difficult except in keeping the crank link in the correct position. The intake cam was the first to go on along with the crank but there was slack between the crank sprocket and intake cam and I needed that slack to get the exhaust cam in the correct spot. I was able to guide that slack up the crank sprocket but it fell and moved the crank link out of position more than once. Irritating.
Eventually I was able to get a few links on the exhaust cam. Then I turned the intake cam to pull the slack between the intake and exhaust cam. I also had to rotate the exhaust cam to get the exhaust phaser\sprocket to sit on the cam shaft.
As I was putting everything back together having not eaten anything the whole day I was thinking about where I was going to eat. After putting the valve cover back on, my friend surprised me with a huge steak. I’d cut a fat piece of the steak and chew it as I put my spark plugs back in. Then get another bite and chew it as I complete the next assembly task.
I was apprehensive about starting the car. When I did it turned over loudly at first and then the idle quickly went low and steady, something I hadn’t heard before.
I was moved emotionally in relief. So much was at stake. If I fucked up I’m fucked. The car right now is not only transportation, but also shelter and the facilitator of my income. In November, I left Milwaukee with $800, a back pack of clothes, and laptop bag. If I can’t start the car I’m back to about $800, the same backpack, and laptop bag.
When I started the car to leave there was a squeal from the belt. I didn’t think too much of it and it went away when I pulled out. I drove and the car ran better than I could have imagined.
About a mile away perhaps further the battery light came on. I stopped at the nearest gas station and looked under the hood to check the belt. The squeal and the battery light led to the presumption that the belt fell off and the alternator was no longer charging the battery. The belt was gone. I looked under the passenger wheel well to see if I could see it. It was gone and I noticed oil coming from the crankshaft. I presumed I hadn’t tightenend the crankshaft bolt tight enough. The bolt came loose and the pulley came out which caused the belt to fall off.
It was about 9pm and the part stores were closed. I went back to my friend’s house and explained the situation to him. He asked me what I wanted to do. I asked him to spend the night and intended to take a Lift to and from work, buy a belt and tighten the bolt in the morning. I was concerned I may have damaged the gasket on the timing cover that goes around the crankshaft bolt. A lyft was $80 from his house to where I’m working so I asked him if he’d give me a ride in the morning.
I was very upset, an odd feeling of helplessness despite having help, disgusted that my neglect may have just supremely fucked me.
I woke up at about 4:30am. I thought, why go to work and pay an exorbitant amount of money to get back and then fix the car when I could have him give me a ride to the parts store and fix the problem and go to work late? I went to the car, tightened the crankshaft bolt and after replacing the belt I was good.
The whole weekend including going out was mentally and emotionally taxing.
—
Yesterday I made a mistake I felt kind of bad about. My intentions are typically correct and I usually don’t act without certainty, but yesterday I fucked up and I was bothered by it after work as well as today.
While working this job I was upset about other contractors obstructing the doorways. We’re bringing furniture into the rooms all day and it is aggravating when the door ways are obstructed.
I began putting the materials that were left in the doorways in the bathroom which was the furthest place from where they could be. If I have to move it they have to move it back.
Eventually I found out who was doing it and told them what I was doing and why I was doing it. Basically, if you make shit hard on us we’re going to make shit hard on you, where we both understand that we’re all better off to make things easier on one another. It was funny, one of the contractors told me he went to the truck to get wood because he thought the wood I put in the bathroom wasn’t there anymore. We laughed about it.
In the days following the doorways were cleared and I told our people about the conversation so they wouldn’t put boxes in their work area. I had to move some boxes out of their area put there by our people to do my part.
Things were better but over the past few days I noticed more stuff in the door ways so I started putting that stuff back in the area I thought it came from.
Yesterday I went into a room and the doorway was cleared but we had a couch in a box just past the doorway and we needed to swap dressers. Behind the couch were cabinet materials and other shit. I took those materials and put them in the cabinet work area. I also accidently kicked over a bucket of screws.
Later I felt bad for this. In the moment it felt like shit was put in our way but there was no expectation not to put the materials in other places, so long as the doorway was unobstructed. I felt bad because in hindsight it seemed like someone made the extra effort to keep their shit out of the doorway, and then I made it hard on them after they tried to make it easy on me.
Now, as I think about it, I may have been correct in the moment and wrong retrospectively, since the scrap material was placed in the area where they knew the couch would go. However, the couch still boxed was in the space outside of the doorway where the scrap could be placed without obstructing the doorway.
I rarely feel bad because my behavior is always consistent with my morality, but when I think I fucked up I do feel bad about it. I bring this up as an example of my conscience, because there are not many examples. In fact if I were asked today when was the last time I felt bad for something I did, it would be difficult for me to produce an example. I mean feel bad morally, not feel bad for a seemingly poor decision, like feeling bad because I thought I purchased a car I couldn’t fix.
—
The other day the Chief of Operations brought up a misconception that I’ve heard before, that pants sagging originated from gay people in prison advertising that they were interested in sex. As someone who has been to jail and prison as a juvenile and as an adult I can attest to it being false. Some people in prison sagged, but of the few open homosexuals I’ve been incarcerated with they did not sag their pants. It’s poor advertisement, where most wore tight pants around their waist which naturally provides a better look at their figure (like women) than sagging their pants.
People sag their pants for a variety of reasons, typically style and comfort, but very few if any people sag their pants advertising for a homosexual encounter. A pair of pants worn tightly around the waist is a much better advertisement than sagging.
I have to imagine this misconception probably arose from some effort by white people to criticize urban style and to prevent their suburban, rural, and even urban children from adopting it.
—
Today I was somewhat put in charge of the other laborers. The main instructions were to ensure that people understood what they were supposed to do and that each person pulled their weight relative to the curve of the crew.
I don’t want anyone to feel like someone else is being paid for the work they’re doing, which is essentially what is happening when 5 people are working and one 1 person is not. Prior to today that hasn’t been much of an issue, the crew has worked exceptionally.
I was told to send anyone down who wasn’t pulling their weight. There was an older gentleman who came late. I explained to him the details of what we were doing and left to perform my share of the work. We all were clearing rooms and he was in one room. One of my coworkers commented to me that the guy was still in the same room. I’d also noticed it and told him I’d talk to him.
I went into the room he was in and told him it’s a fast process. Then I provided the example by clearing the room and bringing a box out of the room and taking it near the point where it would be offloaded. When I returned he was still in the same room for which there was no purpose for him to be in. I told him to go see the Chief of Operations as instructed.
Later it seemed another guy was fucking off as well. After we finished clearing the 5th floor we went to the 4th floor to unbox but it appeared as if there was nothing to unbox so we were going to go to the third floor.
We were missing a guy so I went to the 4th floor to get him. I thought he was behind me but he must have lingered behind. On the 4th floor I saw the Senior Installer and he said there were tables after the hall turned on the 4th floor that needed to be unboxed. The crew and myself began unboxing the tables. We finished the floor and went to the 3rd. The person who was on the 5th floor I told we were going to the 3rd didn’t join us until we were already into the second. He claimed it was a communication issue, but the issue was when I went to get him, he had no business on the floor he was on and should have been with me but instead chose to linger behind.
On the second floor I told him which boxes we were unboxing, luggage benches where there were 2 per box and one went across the hall, and rolling tables. I didn’t know this at the time, but he was unboxing a very large piece of furniture he was not supposed to be unboxing. As a result, we cleared another floor and he completed 2 or 3 rooms. The Senior Installer told him to stick with me but I moved on from him, telling the Senior Installer I’m not going to babysit being on the brink of sending him to the Chief of Operations..
Shortly after the Chief of Operations came to the floor and in conversation I provided him with my observations of the individual’s performance, suggesting that he too may be more of an asset outside than inside.
Once we moved to a different task he was keeping pace and performed quite well. I told him that I might have had the wrong impression of his work ethic and provided him with the explanation for that impression. The rest of the day he performed on par with the rest of us.
The reason I’m writing about this is because of what happened later. I was instructed by the Senior Installer to call the Chief of Operations. I call him the owner despite his wife officially being the owner.
I called the CO and he told me to have the two people who had been with us come with me and meet him upstairs, and for the other two to take a smoke break and meet him in the lobby.
The three of us went upstairs and received our instructions and one of my coworkers came with me to begin our task.
During the time I was upstairs I gave both of them a good review and since I was asked I recommended that both of them return.
When we arrived on the 1st floor they were picking up trash in rooms we’d already cleared. One detail I forgot to mention is the guy I sent out at the beginning of the day was assigned to clean up outside and eventually ended up cleaning on the first floor. I was instructed to have all three of them take a smoke break and wait in the lobby. Since we were near the stairwell and they were on the 1st floor, I delegated the responsibility to them since they were going to the same place and presumably had time to find him since they were told to take a smoke break.
When I saw them I asked one of them if they were available tomorrow since the CO planned on bringing them back. He said I don’t know if I’ll talk to Mark about that. What I presume happened, is they told the other guy what the owner told me to tell them. He probably said I’m working for Mark, I’m not working for him (me), so I’m going to keep working. They agreed that they would ignore the message I relayed and keep working. For 13 dollars, what they gained in working an extra hour they fucked up in our working relationship.
I was pissed off about this, mainly because it implied that I was trying to take the instructions I’d been given and play a role that I wasn’t assigned, or pretended to have more importance than I actually did, and I didn’t do that at all. I’ve had 0 issues in over 2 weeks with anyone I’ve worked with. The exception was an occasion when a person who had insecurity issues and mild paranoia implied I was being insincere to him. I told him to kiss my ass. But we were cool before that and we were cool after that. I was offended by that, because I pride myself in my sincerity.
Whatever the reason was that they didn’t listen to the owner and take a break and then wait for him in the lobby, I now feel like fuck both of them. All day I’m cool, respectful, and don’t say nothing to them unless it’s been told to me by the CO or SI, or I’m making a joke which I often am. The only authority I asserted which really wasn’t even the assertion of authority was when the guy was fucking off or seemed like he was fucking off. The reason being is the rest of the team knows I’m responsible for making sure they’re not carrying someone else’s weight.
I don’t like to write about work but I don’t have time for much else right now.
At the end of the day for whatever reason the SI told me to tell one of my coworkers to see him in the lobby. He didn’t go see him right away he met me in the room where we had our stuff. This of course is a different set of circumstances, where in one situation, instructions are given on how they will proceed while the work day is ongoing, and in the other, we’re going home and we pass through the lobby to do so. It doesn’t make sense from the 2nd floor to go to the 1st to meet the SI then go to the 3rd to get his stuff and then back the 1st to leave.
—
Dangerously cold weather on Sunday and Monday have forced me indoors. Also the need to relax after fixing my timing chain and to consider my plan moving forward. The two months I spent in Vegas were much slower than this past month leaving Vegas. This month has moved quickly which is partially a product of working the job I’ve been working for almost 3 weeks, and partially based on meeting the demands of my circumstances. This has put distance between the things that are important to me, albeit the allocation of time to those things that I’ve allocated time to has been necessary to position myself to advance my objectives.
Very few people have an interest in reading about things they’re interested in, much less things they have few points of reference for. The main reason the interview I did in Austin was such a train wreck was the immediate circumstances I was faced with, including the absence of weed. Another reason I thought I performed so poorly was because the interviewer wasn’t familiar with my content to ask any questions related to it. I intend to put together an interview as if I was interviewing myself with another person asking the questions.
I would like to do a Sequencing and Comparison video. It can consist of a person providing 10 thoughts or a conversation where SCA can be demonstrated as the underlying functions that produced the thoughts or ideas in the conversation. Where each object’s assignments can be shown.
I have the 3rd lesson with no questions to edit and post which is CVIARP.
After that I want to go through and edit and organize these Texas entries.
I need to consider how I’m going to organize my material and website into something that isn’t just words.
The more pressing issue is where am I going to go and what I’m going to do when this work project concludes?
—
What a waste of semi comfort. Bovada solicited me with a bonus a day or two prior to me renting a room for 4 days. The bonus was too good to pass up and my 30$ turned to 80$ instantly. A day later I cashed out for 60 dollars. Only a 30$ gain but it only.cost me 10 minutes of time to do it.
There was another bonus I wanted to take advantage of so I moved the money back to get the next bonus. The problem was to withdraw this bonus. There are play through requirements. A mix of playing well with good reads and getting ridiculously sucked out on, and then playing shit cards, making bad reads, and making bad calls and raises because I was pissed off that the one final table I did make it to I was knocked out by consecutive or near consecutive hands where we moved all in and was sucked out on twice on the river to 3 outers. 8th is 45$ and 1st is $1000.
I was also distracted because I thought or may have been double charged for the room. My transactions on my bank app show a pending charge of 185.84, plus a $50 deposit. Then the hotel charged me again but they claim the 185.84 is just a hold on funds and won’t be taken. The transactions are still pending so I can’t dispute the transactions and won’t know if I’ll have to until it goes through. I was upset about this until Sunday night until I was somewhat reassured I wasn’t being double charged by the 3rd front desk person I spoke to.
I would have felt better had I at least posted balance in morality and lesson 3 CVIARP: Understanding the Points of Action In A Consciously Created Result.
I think what I need to do is hire someone to learn my material. $10 to $15 an hour and I can accomplish a lot in a few hours. Maybe. At least be able to make a video.
I’m back in the car. It’s going to be cold but still in the high teens. The night before I checked into the hotel it was low 20s high teens and I was comfortable.
—
It is very stupid to criticize the Texas energy grid failure due to the infrequency of the event that caused the freezing and bursting of pipes used to supply fuel for electricity generation. If this occurs once every 20 to 30 years why would you spend money to prevent it? I’m not talking about the power companies spending money, I’m talking about the consumers spending money. If the power companies invest billions of dollars to protect against extreme cold that Texas experiences infrequently, that cost is going to be passed down to the consumers.
1st if the grid were upgraded to protect against extreme cold it is going to be subsidized and on a state budget that money is going to have to come from somewhere. Since 2020 was not a strong year economically it is unlikely that money is available through an increase in tax revenue caused by economic growth. We start with a tax increase. More importantly, if the power companies spend money that cost is going to trickle down to the consumer. Do you want to pay more for energy every month to be protected against an event that you may not see again?
Given the great inconvenience it is to live for days with intermittent electricity, the media and public figures want to attract attention by suggesting this is a problem with the grid and people who they don’t like are to blame.
—
The hotel staff were correct, my money was refunded. I was an asshole for that but it’s really stupid that they hold the price of the room and then charge you again. It appeared as a pending transaction which means the next banking day it will go through. I do apologize to the staff and the things I said about them. If I was being double charged those things are true, but in the absence of being double charged their responses were appropriate.
—
I’ve been better than I am today. My friend from Milwaukee lives in Plano and asked if I wanted to help him out drinking another 1.75 liter of Johnny Walker Black. I had some articles I was going to edit and post but reasoned that it would be good for me to get out of the hotel, socialize, and break the monotony of this daily grind. I could do the edits in the morning.
Must have been the first time in years I threw up drinking. I was so fucked up that I thought the red hue in my vomit was blood when it was actually the hot sauce I had eaten earlier. I didn’t sleep well and have not felt good all day.
We were smoking some weed and I expressed my present outlook to my friend. I have this job that is killing me to perform. It isn’t difficult and the pay is better than I will be making doing anything else, but each day of repetitive motion feels like time is running out. I explained to him that I have been indirectly invited to work on an upcoming project in Allentown, PA. Until the last deliveries come I can’t see us having more than 2 to 3 days worth of work remaining based on what we have at the hotel. Maybe we stretch it to 4 or 5 days. Then maybe we have a few days off and have a few days after that.
I’ve posted an ad to pay people $15 an hour to learn my material. I’ve received several responses from interested people.
I have what I believe will prove to be a very effective method for teaching SCA. Basically, I intend to create a functional understanding of the term object, including layers, and then go around the room and have the participant comment on objects. Through those comments SCA will be revealed as all the comments will be a product of the 4 assignments. This will lay the foundation for understanding morality functionally, leading into objective morality, where the decision making process among other topics can be explained and understood.
With this strategy fresh in my mind, where I’ll have the details of the initial lesson and a rehearsal by the end of the week, if not sooner, what do I want to do? I should have close to $1600 after I’m paid on Monday, and if there are 3 to 4 days of work this week I’ll have about $2000. I reduce the pay from $15 to $10 dollars an hour and I can buy 40 hours of teaching time and have about $1600 to float by for a few weeks. I think the division would probably be 5 hours on 8 people. Even 5 people would probably be adequate. If I record the sessions I can write a paper about it and possibly gain funding to continue the research.
I’m still apprehensive about the interview in Austin. There are a number of reasons for my poor performance. Stress from my general circumstances, more specifically living out of a car that could have become nonfunctional at any moment, combined with an inability to make money, and a rushed effort to extract and pitch the most important elements of my material. With this going on I wasn’t appearing as myself, I was appearing as the representative of my material. By that I mean I toned myself down, which is something I do to facilitate comfort for others. I answered questions I wasn’t prepared for very poorly. I was told I would receive the raw footage but he is having difficulties compressing and uploading it. Even with it, it does little to set my mind at ease. There are enough articulate segments to make a video that speaks powerful truth and portrays me in a positive light. I think. There are enough bad parts to make me look like a complete fucking idiot. On my side, he appeared to have a conceptual understanding of much of what I was saying. He’s also a Marxist, which means one of two things to me, 1: He may be committed to communism and then despite my good intentions, sincerity, identification of problems, and ideas that advance human interests, he wouldn’t be an ally because I’m not for socialism. 2: He’s a Marxist because he is for a more equitable distribution of opportunities for people to have time and money. If that’s the case, he’d support me and the only thing I have to worry about is his discretion in what he chooses to use and not to use.
–
By my friend’s house yesterday there was a single woman. I failed horribly trying to land her. She was Korean and I don’t think she was feeling my style. When we were on the porch my friend came out and handed me the bottle of Johnnie. I handed her the bottle to make a joke knowing that she wasn’t going to drink it. She declined when I handed her the bottle and I said no I don’t want you to drink it, I was just handing it to you to hold it because I don’t want to hold it. That didn’t land. Later we were in the house and she was sitting next to me and I was getting some friendly touching in that she didn’t seem to mind. I thought she told me she was 28 and she pretended she was offended because she was actually only 25. I commented that her agitation wasn’t real, that it was a product of social expectations to provide the response she’s been conditioned is appropriate based on the stereotype that women are supposed to be sensitive about their age. I also explained that the difference in appearance between 25 and 28 is insignificant. What’s worse is I repeated the age because I thought that is what she said, otherwise I would have probably put her at less than 25 because she thought I was older than I actually am. People 30 and up typically put me in my early 30s, but people who are under 25 can see my age better.
Immediately following this exchange I changed the subject but it was a very poor choice of subjects. I was pretty drunk though and I was interested in seeing how she would respond to an explanation I was told about origins of fake eyelashes. It’s probably not true, but it is true that it was told to me. She had fake eyelashes on and I was told that fake eyelashes became popular in whore houses and were dubbed “Cumbrellas” because it would prevent cum on the prostitutes face from getting into her eyes. She left soon after that story.
Finally, a few days ago the CO was telling a story that led into another story about a young black man who was given a loitering ticket for standing in front of his house without an ID. He told me that the loitering ticket was only $50 but his failure to appear resulted in a $1200 fine that led to the young man having to serve a few weeks in jail for doing nothing other than standing in front of his house.
At the time I was only half engaged in the story, but in my experience failing to appear for citation doesn’t result in any penalty other than a default judgment against the defendant where the defendant is given a certain period of time to pay the ticket otherwise an additional consequence is imposed, the debt either goes to collections, is taken from your tax return, results in jail time, or a suspension of driving privileges. The story seems untrue.
Even if it was true. This is one incident, perhaps the practice of one officer, or maybe even one precinct or department. Even if true it does not represent a standard practice by other police departments in the United States and does not represent systemic racism in policing. If such a policy did exist, and there is some place where they impose a $1200 fine for failing to appear for municipal citation, then 1: he needs to make sure he makes that court date since missing 1 day of work is much better than missing two weeks of work. 2: There are a plethora of black advocate groups that can be contacted, awareness can be created, and the loitering ordinance or law would be changed.
—
The other day the CO brought up toll roads in an effort to demonstrate some point that I cannot remember because it was unrelated. He’s a cool guy, but he makes a lot of parallels that don’t actually parallel the point he’s making. The point of mentioning this is because he said he thought toll roads implied that a person with money’s time is more important than a poor person’s time. Obviously if we quantified the value of time in money this would be true, but what’s missed is how toll roads benefit everyone.
The toll road benefits everyone, even those who can’t afford it because it creates space on the roads that existed before it. The more people who take the toll roads the fewer people there are on the non-toll roads.
3/2021 Break 1
The work project in DFW is at a pause because we are unable to finish until others finish and furniture and fixtures arrive. I have a break from the funding aspect of my aspirations to apply time to those aspirations themselves.
The last week was difficult for me for a few reasons, not the least of which was having a roommate but it’s difficult to complain about a free room from the company when you are without one. He was almost completely accommodating other than some intended or unintended disturbances. One of which was eating Cheez-Its while I was trying to sleep. It was more of an irritant that I didn’t have standing to say anything to him. How can I tell him he can’t eat if I’m sleeping? On another occasion he shut off the fan, and I asked him to turn the fan back on because I don’t want to listen to that do do do do doot shit, describing the sound the buttons on his phone was making and notifications.
Other than that and his spitting (chewing tobacco) he seemed to make every effort to be accomodating. Shower, lights, temperature, and the socializing we did was typically entertaining. The last night we were there the Chief of Operations dropped a pair of underwear by our door. Using a Panda Express napkin and after melting a hershey almond candy bar on it I placed it in front of his door. It was much funnier thinking about it than doing it, but I couldn’t not do it after enjoying the idea as much as I had.
There was a coworker who I socialized with that I had a falling out with so to speak, or we fell out of one another’s favor is more accurate. It was about work. Towards the end he began to half ass it which creates more work for me and I joked about it initially, and then I got on him about it as I saw it. Yes, we all make mistakes and overlook things, but I’ve seen the way he works, so I know he’s capable of greater consistency, so the poor performance seems intentional. Regardless of whether you saved me money on contacts, or I paid extra for small sacks (of marijuana) which helped out both you and me, I don’t work with you when you’re intentionally creating more work for me. After thinking he was damaging the window opening trying to fit tight sills when we can cut them to fit, I told him to go see the Chief of Operations about caulking. He didn’t damage that particular opening the way I thought he did because I saw the same damage in another location and I texted him that. I told him he could still go see the Chief of Operations because he was slowing me down. Yes I’m paid hourly but I wanted to get to this break.
The last two days I was somewhat distracted by this situation. We were cool though, blowing trees, looking out on beverages, joking, talking shit, and he kind of reminded me of people I grew up with, nobody in particular just his general values and mannerism.
Over the course of that job it was like 90% cool people there. The whole 1st week crew was solid, even the one who had quirks and paranoia but worked hard and was cool to be around in short durations, which suited a work environment that consisted of a lot of motion.
My car shakes at higher speeds, but strangely, it will sometimes not shake at some higher speeds. Under 65 I’m usually good and at low speeds there is no shaking. I thought it may have been a wheel bearing. My strut was also bad so I had the strut replaced, and the following morning I had them replace the other strutt and the wheel bearing. Same issue.
I initially thought he changed the wrong wheel bearing. Since the new wheel hub comes with the studs I removed a lug nut to see which studs appeared newer. The old studs looked newer because the new spindle wheel hub had black studs. I went back furious and he showed me the new hub was installed on the correct side.
He did point out that I had an oversized tire on the back. I asked if he had a used tire in my size.
What’s fucked up about this is the day before when I had them change the strut, I also bought a tire from Walmart because the front right tire was badly worn. I asked him if he had a used tire to replace the oversized one in the back. He said he had one he’d sell me for 35 dollars. I didn’t look at the tire because to that point he had installed everything on my car correctly, and gave me a deal on the price, while I had just created something of a scene at his shop and suspected him of doing something incorrectly. I didn’t feel bad because I had reasons to suspect it, but I did want to acknowledge that I was wrong, so I was very apologetic.
The point being, I looked at the tire after leaving and stopping for gas and thought damn, I should have looked at that tire. Today I thought what if that mother fucker only had 1 in my size because he was reselling that worn out tire? I went back out and inspected the tire and it is the same Michelin tire I paid $5 to have disposed of that he sold back to me for $35. I don’t know if he knew this since he wasn’t the one who did it, but that’s what he did.
I already gave him a 5 star review with the comment Great prices, great quality, and fast service. I’m not going to add the tire to my review because outside of this I think the description is still accurate. And I feel deserving for the way I expressed my suspicion.
I’m going back to Vegas because I haven’t received my title so it is the only place I can register my car. Hopefully I’ll pass emissions. No check engine light but my service airbag light comes on periodically.
I began reading a draft of the Clean Future Act. In what I’ve read it is cap and trade legislation. There will be a gradual decrease in the amount of allowable emissions and companies who invest in renewable energy generation, storage, grid, or carbon capture will receive credits that can be sold to those who exceed allowable levels. There are some subsidies in the bill but the spending is insignificant. I suspect if it passes there will be follow up bills with much more spending to line the pockets of industry. Of course there is still the usual, applying public funds to pay for research that will belong to private companies.
1st, the goal of a carbon free economy by 2035 is not realistic. There are limits on manufacturing capability if it was a top priority which clearly it isn’t, and there is an ever increasing demand for energy including fossil fuels. Is the transportation sector considered part of the economy? A modest effort to address climate change isn’t much of an effort at addressing climate change. If we reach 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the impact will be about the same as if we avoided reaching 2.2 degrees Celsius because of cap and trade and an efficiency regulatory approach.
I supported Sander’s 2 trillion dollar idea to build all the infrastructure and place it under the management of the power marketing administrations. My twist was to sell the power to the utility companies 1: because they have the highest level of expertise in the maintenance and distribution of power. 2 because it prevents the government from controlling the price of power. 3 because it is a public asset, the proceeds of which may fund the public interest.
My modification to Sander’s plan would be to charge an amount for the power generated that provided for building additional infrastructure to keep pace with rising demand, and to subsidize the cost of power to low income people.
Under Obama there was about $300 billion spent on renewable energy subsidies. If Obama would have applied that to the Sanders plan, $300 billion covers about 16% of the cost of generating all power from renewable energy including upgrading transmission and storage. Had those funds been applied to the Sanders plan the public would own 300 billion dollars worth of power generating assets, and those power generating assets could have made money in the last 5 years that could have been reinvested into manufacturing and installing more renewable energy power generating assets.
Both R&D and construction projects the bills states can be used to justify raising rates. The public is going to pay, the same as the public is presently paying in states that have used a similar approach to reduce emissions. If you google cost of electricity by state, you’ll find the consumers who pay the highest for electricity are in the states that are most committed to a regulatory approach to producing renewable energy. This is because mandating energy efficiency or renewable production always includes raising consumer rates, regardless of whether the effort is already subsidized.
My main concern is the creation of this new carbon credit market and how it will influence the production and distribution of energy.
The value of the carbon credit will be determined by the amount of emissions. To lower the value of the carbon credit emitters can reduce emissions. Imagine a situation where fossil fuel generators cut people’s power citing the regulatory environment in an effort to drive down the cost of credits? That’s one example of market manipulation and a potential consequence. I’ve only read about 70 pages, I’d like to read the rest of the bill and write more thoroughly on the subjects and include citations for energy demand growth, and manufacturing constraints. At some point I should, but I’m too preoccupied with other shit.
I’m going to drive and get a hotel for 2 days before I go to Vegas to smog and register my car.
I’m most concerned with finishing up my SCA presentation, practicing it, and finding people to try to teach and record.
Right now I’m at the worst fucking rest stop in New Mexico. There are roundabouts at the off ramps and the rest area is hidden 3 turns after the roundabout. I had to piss just about as bad as I’ve ever had to piss. I finally find this mother fucker and the bathroom I pull close to is closed. It’s actually pretty nice, New Mexico has nice landscape, and this rest area has nicely separated picnic areas with grills.
—
I saw the word ego painted on I believe a rock in blue driving along I40. The word is generally associated with a person’s degree of pride in themself, what I refer to as self worth. People who appear egotistical are often viewed negatively. Eastern religions attempt to break their egos and western religions promote humility.
The ego cannot be broken, only channeled and hidden. The outward appearance is masked but the ego remains. The individual takes pride in outwardly denying their pride and these acts fuel their self worth since the denial is a valued act by themselves and others. The buddhist who fasts and meditates for 24 hours feels pride in himself (ego) for enduring what he has endured even if he doesn’t express that pride outwardly. The same as the Christian who does a good deed in secret, this fuels his ego even if it isn’t outwardly expressed. (Although some of this is an increase in self worth through image promotion, where the idea that being obedient to their deity causes the deity to like them more which causes them to feel good about themselves.)
The ego is never broken, just channeled.
I don’t know if I’ve written this elsewhere but I explained what meditation is to a woman who responded to one of my CL ads to learn my material. Mood describes our general feeling at a given time. How we feel is a product of what we perceive in our environment, our thoughts, and our feelings and the cycle between these.
What we think about determines how we feel, but the introduction of something into our environment changes our feelings while bypassing our thoughts. Finally, how we feel influences the kind of thoughts we have and how we perceive our environment. It is a cycle, but the chief among these three is our thoughts.
Meditation that involves efforts to focus on breathing, or to think about nothing, or to focus on tranquil ideas is essentially resetting mood by blocking out concerns about objectives and impediments.
Other meditation such as prayer influences mood by producing positive feelings in the false belief that the effort represents progress towards achieving objectives.
Lastly, the embrace of the ego if it is rooted in the value of truth is key to breaking free from self deception. It is self honesty, acknowledging what you are, how you perceive yourself, and asserting your values and worth. The concept of ego is pride in self or self worth. To deny your ego is to shift your self worth into something that is not overtly observable, but it is still present.
—
I changed the CV axle. I wasn’t going to but I need to know that this wasn’t the problem. Since I know the wheel bearing and axel are sound at least I don’t need to worry about losing the wheel itself should one of those parts fail. I have a vehicle that I shouldn’t exceed 70mph.
My daughter’s mother just received my title in the mail. She overnighted it to me which gives me a new option to consider and also means I don’t need to go to Vegas. The question is, do I sell the car because it shakes over 70mph, or do I keep it?
—
I didn’t go to Vegas. Instead I returned to DFW. As I drove back I began to notice the source of the vibrations was coming from the drivers side but must have been vibrating across the drivetrain to make it feel as if it was coming from the passenger side. I was optimistic because I still had the wheel bearing I ordered from carparts.com.
That part sat at a fedex location for 4 days and didn’t move. When it arrived late a representative from the company said it was a pleasure doing business with you. That comment pissed me off because it was not a pleasure for me. Since the package did not arrive prior to me leaving for Vegas I bought a wheel hub from the part store that retailed for $137. I paid to have it installed because I was in a hurry, and installed it on the wrong side because the vibration seemed to come from the passenger side.
With that said it was fortunate for me that the delivery was delayed. I arrived in DFW last night and stopped at the hotel I was staying at and picked up the wheel hub.
After picking up the wheel hub I went to see my friend in Temple. I needed a drink, relaxation, and some sexual stimulation.
This morning before I left I asked her if I could change my wheel hub in her driveway. She said I could but I decided not to. 1st because it was 8am on a Sunday and I didn’t know how much banging would be involved in knocking the axel through the hub and breaking the hub loose from the knuckle. It’s some asshole shit to be banging at 8am on a Sunday. 2nd, I didn’t want her to think I only came to hang out with her because I needed a place to work on my car. I enjoyed her company, especially the physical aspects of it. I didn’t want her to feel used for anything other than that, which was a mutual exchange.
I went to the northbound rest stop on I 35 about 20 miles north of Waco. Pulled the tire, removed the caliper, the mounting bracket for the caliper, the abs clip, the axel nut and then drove the cv axel spline through the hub. I went to loosen the hub bolts and snapped my socket converter. The converter changes the 1\4 inch drive to fit a 3\8 ratchet. I had to put everything back together and go to Walmart.
At Walmart they don’t sell single sockets. I was going to steal a 13mm 3\8th inch drive socket from a set but I couldn’t get the socket off of the holder, and it was a pretty popular isle during the time I was in it. I didn’t want to spend $20 on it but in hindsight I probably should have because I need another 3\8th drive ratchet. Instead I bought another pack of converters.
I could furnish more details but the point is I changed the hub in Walmart’s parking lot. When I got on the freeway most of the vibration was gone. I do probably still need to replace the ball joint\control arm on the passenger side, but the wheel hub on the drivers side probably needed to be changed.
I was fortunate to receive the package late because had I received it on time, I would have put it on the passenger side. After it didn’t correct the problem and I replaced the cv axle on the passenger side it’s very unlikely that I would have bought a wheel hub from the parts store and replaced the driver’s side.
On my phone newsfeed I saw a headline that read 4th stimulus. My first thoughts were the consequences to the value of the dollar within the United States, where the 3 previous stimulus due to the broad distribution already promise to drive inflation in the coming years. Ilan Omar and AOC have proposed recurring $2000 per month monthly payments.
1st, this is campaigning by career minded politicians to stimulate their base, where they can have the appearance of being radical progressives for proposing such a preposterous allocation. They make a living proposing ideas they cannot pass that often have insignificant consequences to the people they claim to represent and sometimes, as is the case here, negative consequences. For their supporters they can use these press releases to tell poor people Omar and AOC want to give you $2000 per month. The truth is Omar and AOC want to maintain a six figure income for performing often false political rhetoric the same as Sanders has for 30 plus years.
The level of negativity on the first point is determined by the qualifications for such a stimulus. Is it anyone making 80k or less individually, couples making 160k, or single parents making 120k, qualifications that represent 90% of the population? These were the qualifications for the Biden stimulus. If it were the same this would drive inflation the same as the previous stimuluses, because it doesn’t change the proportion of money held by the bottom and the top, it just changes the proportion of money in circulation to the amount of goods and services, which causes money to be less valuable.
2nd, if a person can count on $2000 per month, they’re less inclined to pursue income opportunities. It isn’t as if this $2000 is going to be used for much else other than consumption. This is why I support the balance stimulus providing a 1 time lump sum payment that an individual can use to improve their income opportunities, and the qualifications will not significantly add to inflation because it changes the proportion of money held by the bottom 50% compared to the top 50%. Enabling access to the market by the bottom 50% who didn’t previously possess the means to participate in decisions of production, where the sum is large enough (between 10k and 30k) to start a business, among other income increasing facilitation.
The other consequence is that many people will quit their jobs. That isn’t altogether bad. In the short term it is bad because it slows growth if companies are looking to expand or create new business and they are unable to find employees. However, for the poor this can be a good thing because then companies will increase wages to attract workers. This is the same rebuttal to the criticism of the balance stimulus when it is suggested that low income people receiving a lump sum will quit their jobs.
The progressive stupidity of giving people $2000 a month isn’t likely to prevail and the creators of the idea know this. It’s for campaign purposes only and if it did pass it would not be a good thing for the economy or for the poor.
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(story omitted)…words cannot objectively produce feelings. 10 people may hear the same word, sentence or paragraph, 3 offended, 3, indifferent, and maybe 4 experience positive feelings. The point being, it is the hearer’s values and perception that produces the feelings, and it may not even be the intent of the speaker for them to feel that way. If the hearer doesn’t want to feel that way they can avoid the presence of the individual (says perhaps the most alone person on this planet lol), or they can change their values and how they perceive words. Sensitive ass mother fuckers.
Of course there can be consequences so the speaker has to be prepared to deal with those consequences when one of these sensitive mother fuckers is offended. I’m not immune to being a sensitive mother fucker in some contexts, but often those contexts occur because a situation is escalating from some moral offense. Still, morally there is no obligation to censor to prevent offense.
(story omitted) …A mask is the greatest reminder of human stupidity in this country. Using data that is not in dispute I’ve demonstrated that the same people who have a risk for severe outcomes for the flu have a risk for severe outcomes with covid. With about 20 minutes of time, a critical mind to ask the right questions, and a simple understanding of basic arithmetic, a person can arrive at the correct conclusion. Now yes there are risks for the extremely sick and extremely elderly, and the ultra rare anomalous deaths of healthy people the same as with the flu. Instead of people developing an understanding of the virus they allow vague opinions that imply great danger to form their perception of the virus. If you don’t wear a mask, social distance, and isolate yourself during flu season, there is no reason to do so for the protection of self and others for covid.
–
I was excited to see a weekly available for 239. When I called they had extra fees where it comes out to over 350 per week. It’s hard for me to spend that kind of money. I was also upset because they charge you a $150 deposit, and then keep $50. If you’re keeping $50, put it on the front for the cost of the room. I guess you.save 4 or 5 dollars in taxes on it but it’s bullshit. $50 cleaning fee when you’re paying somebody probably $12 an hour to spend a half hour or less cleaning it.
It’s just very hard for me to spend money when I don’t have money coming in. Yet I don’t think I can achieve the productivity I want to achieve in the next 2 weeks trying to prepare my presentation living out of my car.
I’ve responded to an ad or two about people renting rooms and posted an ad looking for a room with no responses yet. I can pay 150 to 200 a week. I don’t want to pay 350 per week.
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I haven’t written here for a while. I did spend 335 dollars on a hotel for a week. I thought it would increase productivity and it did. I registered my car and this cost me about $350 dollars. When there was snow on the ground I knew my ball joint was bad. Instead of changing the ball joint I fixed things that did not need to be fixed. Well I guess the struts were bad and so was the left wheel bearing although when I took it off it didn’t seem bad. But the passenger wheel bearing and CV axle did not need to be changed. I’m lamenting that cost. As well as the cost for not looking at the tire I paid $40 for which was the $5 I paid to have it disposed of and the $35 I paid to buy it back a day later when he pointed out that my back tire was too big.
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I was camping in Oklahoma for 4 days playing poker. There was a lot I considered while playing poker and for the first 3 days most of it was very dark. I wrote some of it here but deleted it. A lot of woe is me fuck the world type shit that isn’t very beneficial to what I hope to accomplish. However, if I count the emotions produced by these thoughts and general stress as contributors to an idea I had then it was a productive outing. I had to say come on O being on that bullshit. You’re stressed because you’re always trying to move faster than you can move with what you got, and lack of progress and difficult circumstances conspire to paint this dark picture. It’s true that the conclusions you’re reaching at the moment are an honest assessment of your present circumstances, but it isn’t productive to dwell on that. Some of that is just what I’m telling myself now, but I realize I can’t launch myself without some degree of stability. At the moment I felt like “O” you’ve been acting like a real bitch the last few days.
A few days ago I saw a clip of a video. It may have been old but the content is what is relevant. It was a farmer in AL seemingly complaining about a shortage of illegal immigrants. He said when white people work for 75 dollars a day they don’t work as well as immigrants. This farmer, whatever his income actually is, didn’t look like he made much more than $75 a day.
In considering what seems like a genuine situation where the price of tomatoes is too low to support livable wages, I thought of an idea to market a product to increase cost and gain the favor of the consumer. The idea is to put the dollar per hour amount of the lowest paid employee by the company on the product. If you have someone earning $75 for a 10 hour day, you have a tomato marked 7.5, or you have another tomato that’s marked LPE 15 or 20, but the tomato is 20 cents more which tomato will most people choose? Most are going to pick the tomato that costs more, because they know their purchase is contributing to better wages for the workers to take care of their family. It’s an easy solution to increasing income in the country. That doesn’t replace the need for Centers for Economic Planning or a Balance Stimulus, but will increase workers wages, lead to a greater market share and profits for the companies who employ the tactic and will lead to greater economic growth by increasing the purchasing power of the consumer.
4/2021 GRRRR!!!!!!
This is more or less an assessment of my circumstances and reflecting on the last few weeks I haven’t been posting. There were a few days where I was recording very dry readings of my webpages. This was a waste of time in terms of the product but the exercise had value in editing and refamiliarization with the content. In that refamiliarization I recognized opportunities to insert (haven’t yet done) as well as opportunities to abridge. For example, in Balance Stimulus I can create a version where I exclude my criticism of other ideas that purport to benefit the poor.
One article I began to reread is Centers for Economic Planning. In doing so I found the introduction to be very repetitive. Sometimes this happens as I’m referencing features to make other points about them. I’m sure there are many articles that could benefit from another look.
As to the title of this page I’m coming off a rough weekend. Alcohol use is very enjoyable in the moment but the following day, and then drinking on sequential days amplifies the lingering negative. The lingering negative is much less about the physical recovery, and much more about the time wasted, and the time wasted not feeling good enough to do anything productive.
On Sunday I had to do something and began looking at the customs and border patrol numbers to see how much of the so-called surge is really a surge. The numbers are higher than in recent years, much of this a product of lower than normal numbers due to Covid-19 in 2020, and the perception that Biden’s policy will be friendly to illegal immigrants. If we go back to March of 2006 there were 160k enforcement acts in March. They’ve been calling this March a surge, embellishing it as if the US will soon be overwhelmed by an endless throng of illegal migrants. In March 2021 there was 168k. February was eclipsed in numbers by many other Februarys in recent history.
I was about to write a short article echoing the conclusions from Immigration, Overstated and Uncorrectable. Immigration is still a product of US foreign policy towards latin america past and present. That policy cannot be reversed because US policy is a product of industrial interests and industry’s interest in Latin America requires the maintenance of impoverished conditions to take advantage of low labor costs and facilitate the exploitation of resources. You cannot create policies to support independent economic development because such development that creates prosperity for the population is against the interests of those who direct US policy.
In the coming decades climate change may create an actual surge in migration through the southern border but we’re not there yet. I support illegal immigration. By that I mean I wish the people who take the risks to enter this country in search of opportunity luck, but I don’t support open borders. It has to stay illegal as a deterrent, otherwise illegal immigration could become a problem. As it is today and as it has been in the previous decades preceding, illegal immigration has been a boogie man summoned by the right to engage the rank and file, but it isn’t a problem. The amount of resources dedicated to the maintenance of border security is adequate, evident by the number of illegal immigrants from southern border countries has remained between 10 and 11 million people. CBP and ICE are doing a good job at ensuring the number of illegal immigrants remains below a level that has any consequences on the opportunity of Americans.
(Note: In rereading this journal to repost it in 2024. At the time, April 2021 based on the trend from about 2009 having 160k apprehensions in a month was significant since from 2009 to 2020 we averaged about 400k per year. From 2009 until this point when illegal immigration from the southern border was not an issue it was reported as if it was. In fact the increase that began in 2021 is a product of Trump rhetoric that caused the democrats to change rhetoric and policy at the federal level which led to increases in illegal immigration that we’ve seen from 2021 to present. The appearance is much worse than the actual problem by bussing illegal migrants to blue cities creating concentrations instead of natural disbursement. Something I support since the rhetoric and policies of that party, those states, and those cities have encouraged illegal immigration.)
I have a Lowest Paid Employee Wage Disclosure article which is short that I haven’t published as well as a point by point abridge version of Assignment and Comparison. I haven’t posted this. Why post it? On a few different occasions I’ve seen hits on every SCA article I have. I haven’t received a single comment or question about the material. I don’t see the value of sharing anymore about this without any interest. This of course affects my productivity, and not being productive feels bad. Productivity is impacted by the idea that everything I write has no outlet, so why write it?
The title of this article expresses where I’m at and the probable trajectory of where I’m going. The idea that in a month I will be working for 3.5 months straight is daunting. I already feel how I anticipate I will feel during the period. Most of my time will be focused on the menial tasks of this job and I’m going to feel like shit because I can’t do anything else during this period. That is part of it.
The other part of it is being able to really take the first step with this shit. How do I gain enough attention from a person to be able to teach and promote this? The biggest obstacle is people’s views are not based on an understanding of function, and revealing function destroys their positions, beliefs, and carries with it negative feelings.
—
Once again FedEx did not deliver my car parts on time which forced me to stay in DFW for two extra days. I changed the control arms on the car after receiving the package and the rear portion of the passenger control arm was severely damaged, responsible for most of the vibration that was occurring at higher speeds.
After replacing the control arms I drove to Gurnee, IL to meet with my daughter. We went to breakfast, played games at Dave and Busters, went bowling, and then had dinner before we departed. It was a great day, she seemed to have fun and expressed as much and I did as well. I was subtly perturbed by my daughter’s image. She’s very into the 90s grunge image and music and I didn’t like how she was dressed. I didn’t say anything to her about it, I just felt it reflected poorly on myself and her mother.
A month or two later I was working with Mark and his son at the Marriott Courtyard in McDonough, GA. He made some comments to his son about how his son was dressed and I felt better about being uncomfortable about how my daughter was dressed. I expressed this to Chris (Senior Installer) and he told me a funny story.
His son’s were wearing tight clothes which is the style for a lot of teenagers these days. As the story was told to me, Mark was going to go to some store with his sons. He put on some extremely short and tight shorts and a shirt that might have been one of his kids when they were younger that didn’t go past his belly. He came out and either they didn’t want to go to the store with him dressed like that or asked why he was dressed like that. He said something to the effect what do you mean, this is the style isn’t it, tight clothes.
Prior to leaving DFW I was contacted by the CO who asked if I wanted to come out to North Carolina for 4 to 5 days work in Asheboro. I realized I cannot really do anything until I gain stability in one place. Having a few weeks before the next job starts leaves me in a place where I’m constantly thinking about having to go back to work for the next job. I also cannot begin efforts in organizing because I’ll be off to a new place in a matter of weeks. So I decided to make the drive to NC to make a little bit of money and save a little bit of money on lodging until the next job begins.
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I’ve been waking up severely depressed. Part of this is nicotine withdrawal. I smoke a few cigarettes a day coming from a place where I smoked more than a few cigarettes a day and vaped all day long. The past two days I smoked my last cigarette around 7 or 8pm and then woke up at 5am and 3am, and could not fall back asleep. Laying in bed trying to go back to sleep while my mind shuffles through different aspects of my circumstances.
I don’t want to work this job. The people are great, the work is easy, and the pay is good compared to other opportunities I have for work. This isn’t what I want to be doing and there are other things I want to be doing that I should be able to make a living doing. Some stress has been a product of the CO telling me about the projects he has booked through the year, or giving me a hard hat and safety glasses for an upcoming job, or bringing up that I’ll need an OSHA certification for an upcoming job. All of this in itself should have no effect and some of the information is necessary, but to me it represents a future with the company in idea that produces negative feelings.
Mattress Day
The project is finished and I have a few extra days in a free hotel to figure out what I’m going to do for the next few weeks before we begin the Alabama project. Before I begin comments on this break I wanted to chronicle an incident where I had a verbal altercation with an individual. The altercation was interesting because following it I identified the key points throughout the day where the subject’s behavior produced negative feelings, or points where I was making subconscious value assignments that probably contributed to how I responded to him.
I learned a lesson about cumulative assignments of negative feelings as a product of both subjective values and morality. Without the culmination of shouting matches that could have escalated I may not have so closely considered the accumulation of negative assignments to this individual.
Initially, when he was outside unloading the truck I respected how he was working. He was pulling mattresses and boxsprings off of the truck very quickly. I was upset by his partner who was at the front of the truck laying them down and not moving them, but he was picking up that slack.
The first point of negative feelings was his effort to make jokes towards the end of the Chief of Operations presentation, where he explained where to put the items and which ones to unbag. 1st it was a poor attempt at humor, and second the content was detrimental to what we were trying to accomplish. On two occasions he said the reverse of what the CO said. Even as a joke this can create a problem because someone can hear what he said and then do the wrong thing.
The second point was a negative moral feeling. There was a contractor who walked over to the elevator and this individual began telling him he couldn’t use the elevator and in a way that was very disrespectful. I don’t believe the contractor spoke english, and he was playing on that in a way that was racially degrading. I communicated to the contractor that we had elevators and he walked away from the elevators. It wasn’t only that he was disrespectful to the man, it was that he didn’t have any business talking to him about the elevator. He’s being paid to bring mattresses and box springs to the room. The Senior Installer and myself were in charge of the elevators.
The third point is subjective. The CO told everyone he was ordering pizza and buying soda for lunch. This individual made a special request for electrolyte juice. There’s nothing wrong with that, do what you’re going to do to get what you can out of the situation. But, at the same time he’s buying you lunch and drinks, be appreciative of what is being offered.
The fourth point is he came in from a break smelling like he just got through smoking all the weed. Which is a bad look whether you’re on a job or not. This is subjective, but it still produces a negative feeling. I often smoke weed at work too, but when I do, I use hand sanitizer on my hands, spray cologne, and use eye drops so I never have the appearance of being high at work.
Finally, I was unloading box springs from the elevator and he was positioning box springs to bring to the rooms. He asked if we could use the door people’s cart that had two doors on it. I told him no it’s the door guys cart. He said can we use it anyway?’ I said no. He said something to the effect of what if I ask them? I told him just to bring the mother fuckers down the hallway like they been doing. Then he said I’m going to ask them. From there my voice reflected the anger of him pushing the issue and I began yelling at him. Not casual yelling but yelling aggressively with fury. We went back and forth for a little bit and then left it alone. At lunch break I grabbed some pizza and went outside. When I came back he and his brother went outside. Then I walked to my car to smoke a cigarette and they called me over, we talked, and left one another’s company on good terms.
If we reduce it to him wanting to ask the contractor to use the cart with no context then it appears that I over reacted. Although even if we did reduce it to that incident I didn’t necessarily overreact because his insistence on using something I told him we couldn’t use is basically telling me to go fuck myself in not those words. However, if it wasn’t for the negative feelings I experienced which all contributed to an assignment of value to him, I probably wouldn’t have become as angry and as aggressive with him as I was. It was interesting looking back and identifying his actions, the feelings they produced, why those feelings were produced, and how those assignments influenced my behavior towards him later in the day.
The following day, other than an allegation from another coworker about a person he was working with, he performed well without a problem on a day when most of the temps worked like shit.
7 Year Summary
The first 29 years of my life were a product of difficult beginnings and efforts to be free within those difficulties. Around that age I began to have questions about why the world was the way it was and why I was as I was. The objective pursuit of answers to those questions reshaped my perception of reality. Most notably in the recognition that what exists, exists not by mistake or due to incompetence, but to maintain and advance advantaged interests in this country.
Being naive, I thought I could talk to people who claimed to be concerned with addressing issues that affect people’s quality of life and they would be interested in the solutions. That is me, swift to correct himself and take correction in the satisfaction of knowing that his truth is stronger and more complete. That is not others who profess concern with causes for the financial and social benefits that typically accompany the claim to a cause, who must ignore information and criticism that challenges their beliefs.
For reasons much too complex to address in this summary I left Milwaukee, WI and went to Los Angeles. I rented a room in Panorama City, worked craigslist jobs as well as a telemarketing job in Reseda. I attended different political activist groups as well as political conversational groups. This went on for months but it felt like years. Failing to gain the interest of the groups I attended and finding myself in a situation of utter depravity, eating peanut butter sandwiches and sometimes not having money for the bus I walked to work. I gave the woman I rented a room from notice that I was moving out. Having seen people displaying signs to get money I decided I would sleep on the streets, hold a sign to get money, and have the time to study and work on my material.
This lasted a few months and I traveled up the west coast having no attachment to the Los Angeles area. Eventually I returned to Wisconsin. There was a vehicle that was going to be junked because the wheel hub assembly needed to be replaced. I replaced the wheel hub and was given possession of the vehicle.
While on the west coast I discovered there was a thriving long distance ride share market. I returned to the west coast and made money transporting primarily “trimmigrants”. Trimmigrants are people who migrate to northern California to work as trimmers during the harvest season. They usually arrive in the SF Bay Area and need rides to locations in Humboldt County, while others need rides from Humboldt County back to the bay area. I went as far north as Arcata along the 101. I would try to schedule 3 to 4 passengers at $50 to $75 per person but it didn’t always work out that way, and as you can probably imagine it was very time consuming.
My van broke down in San Francisco. I applied for the meager benefits available, participated in a smoking study that provided me with free cigarettes and some monetary compensation. I lived in the van and began working on material again. Eventually the van was towed and I stayed in a shelter for about a month. Once I completed what I consider today to be a short sighted effort at a book containing 3 proposals geared towards addressing two symptomatic and one systemic issue concerning opportunity and representation, I found a job working for a moving company. I purchased a car and returned to Milwaukee.
In Milwaukee I worked for a company called Wisconsin Foundation Specialists, owned by a man named John Negreu and a woman named Petra.
I received an invitation to go to Colorado Springs to visit and possibly work for someone I knew growing up and accepted the invitation. Over the years I was impressed with his work ethic and skill which translated into success. Unfortunately when I arrived he was not the same person who I used to see from time to time that was doing well for himself. He found himself in some legal trouble, separated from his wife, was secretly using meth, and keeping company with people who were involved in that substance dependence lifestyle. I stayed with him for a few weeks but it was not a good environment. I went to Denver, lived out of my car, and worked jobs through craigslist gigs and day labor services.
I received a call from another person I knew from Milwaukee who asked me if I wanted to work with him in Florida. His dad was awarded damages for injuries sustained in a car accident and purchased some properties that he was going to pay us to repair and renovate. This was more appealing than what I was presently doing so I told him I’d like to come help.
I was looking on craigslist for passengers who wanted to go to Florida for company and to cover the cost of the trip. There was a woman who wanted a puppy transported and was paying $250 but I would have to leave about 2 weeks before I was supposed to arrive for work. I figured I could find work in Florida as well as I could find work in Denver, so I left early to make the $250 to transport the puppy.
In Florida the engine blew on the car. It was still somewhat drivable, I didn’t completely lose compression but it wouldn’t rev higher than 2000 rpms and was on the brink of not running. I called the person who had work and he told me he was going to be postponed because he injured himself falling down a hill at a wedding event.
I knew in Denver I could earn money through the day labor service. I junked my car, I think I received $200 for it and bought a GreyHound ticket back to Denver. After arriving in Denver I may have had $150 maybe less. I left Denver with only about $300 and had unexpected expenses along the way which included a flat tire. I worked at the Iron Man day labor service everyday there was work available. Sometimes I slept outside and other times I rented a bed from different people on Craigslist for $15 to $20 a night. After what I remember to be a few weeks I found an ad on Craigslist to rent a camping trailer at a lot for $150 per week. I rented the trailer, purchased a car, and had to leave the trailer in a dispute over propane costs which wasn’t originally in our agreement and may have been a pretext to kick me out due to his perception of a different issue. It came at a very inopportune time where I didn’t have the money to pay for the propone. I had an opportunity to purchase a reliable car, or not purchase the car and continue living in the trailer. One is the facilitator of comfort and the other is a facilitator of income so I went with the latter.
I was working craigslist jobs and jobs through a labor broker. He did the same thing as the day labor places contracting with companies to provide labor but he supplied higher quality workers and paid significantly higher rates. Still, I estimated at that time that it would require about 4 months living out of my car with my current expenses to save $6000 to position myself to begin promoting my material and trying to advance ideas that would cause this world to be more tolerable. The work was very slow paced and I was approaching the end of my ability to perform it.
At lunch I was looking on the craigslist gig section. There was an ad to drive a box truck for a foreman for a daily rate that was slightly higher than I was making as well as the prospect of tips and hotel accomodations. I called and was given the job. Shortly after my first trip I was made a foreman, and not long after that I was engaged in a 50/50 partnership with the owner. Near the time that I finished I had about $8,000 saved. Unfortunately, I had a three week period where I had to wait to complete two deliveries where I incurred significant expenses. There was a period after that where there was the prospect of doing another trip that led to my departure with the company for a variety of reasons. The main reason was he was making a lot of decisions that were making the job not worthwhile and I suspected him of trying to sabotage our partnership. This sounds strange but there are a lot of details that led me to this suspicion.
To shed just a little light on it I had access to the broker boards. There were occasions when I would put together the schedule I wanted or be in an area telling him to book the jobs and he wouldn’t book the jobs. One trip I did 3 pickups and we had about $5000 profit to split. Then I had a delivery to do that was a guaranteed date that was our job. This was after about the first week of this trip. He had other partnerships with other people and those jobs were in our storage. He asked me to deliver a bunch of his jobs and said we’d pay ourselves $2 a cubic foot for delivering it. After this there were more deliveries. With expenses and labor I really wasn’t making much money on those deliveries and he wasn’t scheduling the pick ups I requested. We had a good first week on the pick ups I did and we had about $2500 profit a piece. I was on the road for another two weeks after this and when I went over the close we had about $5000 in profit, meaning I just worked for two weeks for free, and I also had other commitments after that from jobs he had me pick up from other companies.
The last trip I was going to do with him I stopped at the office in Denver. I was headed to Kansas City to pick up a truck from Penske and I had 3 to 4 pick ups on the schedule. The day before I’m supposed to pick up the truck in Kansas City, while I’m still on my way there, he called me and told me there was a good job in Springfield, IL that had to be picked up that night. I told him I didn’t want to do it. He kept pressing me and I reluctantly agreed. He told the customer I was going to be there at like 2:30 or 4pm and it was about noon when he called me and I think I was at least 6 to 7 hours away.
I rush to Springfield, I stop at Uhaul to get a truck and I go to the customer’s apartment. I talked to her on the phone. She told me she had a flight to catch early the next morning and needed her stuff picked up that night. When I got to the door she opened the door and was on the phone. Then she told me to wait a minute and closed the door. Afterwards she let me in and I began to look at her items and prepare an estimate. This was extremely difficult because I had new paperwork that I didn’t have a chance to look over and I was using a Uhaul truck which we never used but it was the only rental place open that late. My revised estimate pitch is based on the truck and the paperwork, and I had paperwork I’ve never used before and a truck I’ve never used before. I provided her a revised estimate that was less than 20% higher than the estimate she received, which in interstate moving is a very good price.
She cancelled. With her having to catch a flight in the morning there is no way she could have got another moving company there that evening. People usually need to book their move weeks in advance. Most of the jobs come through brokers. The broker keeps the deposit and then posts the job on a board that is accessible to moving companies and then the moving companies take the job from the broker. I suspect she was on the phone with my partner and he had another partner in the area. I believe he may have decided to bring me back for this trip and set up a series of failures.
As to his motivation I didn’t interact with him the same way his foreman and other partners interacted with him. I didn’t always do what he wanted to do, and sometimes I expressed my displeasure with how things were going. There was one job in particular in Leavenworth, KS where I arrived and there was a woman with a paraplegic child, another child, and I think her father who was medically in rough shape. They were moving to Louisiana and had to be out of their apartment that night to get their security deposit back. They didn’t look like they had much money and she said couldn’t pay any more than what was on the estimate. I looked at what needed to be moved, the space, and the cost to deliver it and there was enough money to cover the cost and create a very small profit. He told me to leave and I picked the job up anyway.
I don’t want to portray myself as a good guy, most times I wasn’t and that’s the nature of interstate moving. Anyone who paid a company to take their items across state lines knows that usually you get an estimate, and on the day of your move that price is doubled. I just muddied up this summary but I felt like it was important to at least provide some idea why I suspected him of trying to sabotage a lucrative relationship, and why I severed ties with him.
Eventually I got myself together and decided I would go to Florida to begin my promotional campaign. Florida was a good place to me because it was warm in December, had a diverse population politically speaking, and a high concentration of people. It was also a place I hadn’t been before. I drove straight to Florida from Blue Springs, MO outside of Kansas City. I intended to go to the Tampa area or Fort Myers having been to Fort Myers when I was younger. I stopped in Gainesville and rented a hotel for I think two days to recover from the drive and determine where I was going to go and stay.
When I left the hotel I was pulled over by a Florida State Trooper for not wearing my seat belt. The officer saw my plates were from Colorado and called the K-9 Unit. They performed an open air sniff and the dog alerted on the vehicle. They found 3 grams of marijuana, a pipe with marijuana residue, and 4 10 mg gummy edibles the equivalent potency to about 1.5 grams of marijuana. I was taken into custody, my car was impounded, and I was charged with 4 misdemeanors and 2 felonies. For what I possessed in most states where marijuana is still illegal I could have expected a ticket. I was shocked by the ambition of this officer in the charges he filed, especially given my level of cooperation in believing that the possession of these substances wasn’t a serious offense.
It required most of my money to pay the bond to get out and to get my car out of impound. I began working craigslist jobs. I found steady work through a guy named Cedric Lemorin who contracted with Amazon to do in home product assembly. It began well but soon jobs were fewer and farther apart making it not as lucrative as it began. I was arrested on December 4th, bonded out on the 6th, and I lasted until February and I was forced to return to Milwaukee to fight my charges.
There was a great deal of misconduct by the public defender. I learned the Florida Rules of Professional Conduct and used his misconduct to leverage a favorable resolution by the state. The felonies were dropped, and two of the misdemeanors were dropped for me to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia for 15 days in jail. My first plea offer prior to creating a dossier on the misconduct of the attorney was for 90 days conditional jail time and 3 years probation.
I spent almost a year resolving these cases. After which I was stuck in Milwaukee (West Allis) with very limited opportunities for income and advancement. My car was messed up to the point where I had to junk it. Trapped, I did the only thing I could do which was untrap myself. The plan was to fly to San Diego, apply for whatever benefits were offered, get a shelter bed, find work, buy a car, and begin promotion. San Diego was chosen 1st because it was warm which is appealing if you’re going to be homeless during the winter. The second reason was I presumed like San Francisco, if you’re homeless they’ll get you into a shelter. I applied for benefits and received food share, but it was extremely difficult to get a shelter bed. After spending a week sleeping on the trains I sought opportunity elsewhere.
I found an ad for a cheap room for rent in Las Vegas on craigslist. I flew to Vegas and rented the room. In Vegas gig work was difficult to come by but I found enough to sustain me for the first few weeks and eventually steady work for a 6 week period. Once again I saved enough money for a car.
I bought the car from an auction and it had problems. The first problem was the water pump. The water pump on the 2012 Chevy Malibu is more difficult to change than on most cars because the water pump is on the balancing chain not the serpentine belt. It isn’t all that difficult to change but I was initially intimidated by the job because I’d never done anything like it before. After changing the water pump I discovered I had another problem. The car still ran very rough and I didn’t know the cause.
I had to leave Vegas because I couldn’t sustain myself through gig work there. I left with my car running very poorly to Phoenix because I saw they had a lot of gig work there. I stopped at a cheap hotel in Flagstaff. While at that hotel I was looking in the gigs section of other places. I saw an ad seeking participants for a documentary on voices not represented in the mainstream. The gig was in Austin and I contacted the producers who were interested in interviewing me. I decided to skip Phoenix and went to Austin.
I did the interview and was told I would have access to the raw footage that I could use for my own purposes and that the documentary would be released May of 2021. I contacted the producer several times and was given excuses as to why he was unable to get me the footage, and on the last occasion I contacted him after May he didn’t respond at all. I’m not too disappointed because although there were portions where I was able to articulate key points, I consider my overall performance to be pretty poor.
While in Austin prior to the interview I got the check engine codes that confirmed that my timing chain was loose. I had less than $400 and was living in a car that could die at any time. I was trying to condense my material to get out every key point I had and I answered some questions poorly in an effort to appear more proper and professional than I actually am. In hindsight, I’m not too disappointed that the documentary was probably never released and that I didn’t receive the footage.
The producer stated he was a Marxist which is good or bad for me in respect to how he may try to portray me having both good and bad footage. There are two kinds of socialists, there are people who are socialists because they believe socialism provides people the best quality of life opportunities. I don’t have a problem with these socialists because they will support proposals that are not socialist if they believe these proposals will lead to improvements in people’s quality of life. Then there are socialists who are for socialism based on an allegiance to the system. Committed to an ideology that capitalism is inherently flawed and therefore any improvements within a capitalist system are not worthwhile. One group would see me as a capitalist who has practical quality of life improving solutions and should support me. The others would hate me for no other reason than I’m not a socialist.
Adding to my stress in Austin was the inability to find work. Eventually I found work in Dallas with an FF&E company. FF&E stands for furniture, fixtures, and equipment and we installed these items in new hotel constructions. I traveled with the company for approximately 7 months, with some small gaps in between jobs. The work was alright, the people were cool, and it provided me with the means to change my timing chain and a bunch of other issues with my car. The goal was to save between 10 and 15 thousand dollars and begin promoting my material.
I was unable to reach this goal having to leave the company because of a situation I won’t go into now. I had about half the lower end of my goal saved when I departed. I’ve been in a situation where circumstances have caused me to eat deeply into the money.
The last 7 years of my life have been difficult to say the least. It has been a recurring cycle of trying to position myself to earn money through the promotion of material and ideas that advance human interests, but experiencing setback after setback that maintains my isolation. Now, with no housing option being appealing since I have poor credit and no verifiable income and not wanting to spend $1300 a month on a hotel, I was going to begin a national promotion campaign.
I purchased 10,000 flyers and intended to distribute face to face in different locations. I was going to move from location to location and use the flyers as a means to interact with the public and hopefully draw attention to my material. Unfortunately, these efforts have proved ineffective and I need to try something else.
It’s crazy that in 7 years, no one has read or understood what I have written. Prior to compiling material into the publications featured on my website, all of this material was on my website for free. As well as other material that hasn’t been compiled into a project. When people don’t like what you’re saying because it invalidates their perception, they have the option to ignore you.
As for my first 31 years, before leaving for LA 2014, my life wasn’t great then either although circumstantially it was better at times. I served over 6 years incarcerated off and on in between the ages of 14 to 24, primarily for battery charges. I sold primarily marijuana and prescription pain medication to support myself and family which was the best opportunity available to me to have money and time in Milwaukee.
In the last 7 years I had two good income opportunities. Had I been serious about these jobs I could have had a career in either one of them, in interstate moving, or in FF&E. Human happiness is built on one of two foundations. The first is a job where a person’s income affords them the means, including sufficient time not working to do what they want to do. The second is for a person to make enough money to provide for their natural needs while doing what they want to do. Unfortunately for me, entertainment isn’t a strong enough motivator for me to be content working a job and ignoring what I see around me. What I want to be doing is creating progress towards a world that is tolerable and that is my number 2.
When I initially set out on this path I was motivated by profound feelings of compassion and empathy that caused me to want to improve the lives of others in realizing a freer, more just world, and a more intelligent species. In my development and a better understanding of functions, in understanding how people’s propensity for self deception produces the world we live in, my general motivation for maintaining this course is no longer empathy and compassion. In acts, I can still be motivated by these things, it feels good to be helpful. But in ambition, it is more a product of creating progress towards a more tolerable world, and a commitment to right, in liberty and truth.
9/2021
For the last 8 months minus roughly 6 weeks now I was working a job traveling as a furniture, fixtures, and equipment installer on new hotel constructions with some short breaks in between jobs. I began the job intent on earning enough money to purchase the tools and parts to change my timing chain. However, since the work wasn’t too bad, the people I worked with were cool, and it was the best income opportunity available to me, I decided to work with this company after I earned enough money to change my timing chain.
The goal was to save about $15,000. Unfortunately, unexpected expenses and circumstances that recently forced my departure left me well short of that goal. I had a structural issue with my car that forced me to pay for and make a lot of repairs. It shook when driving between 65 and 70mph. I bought the parts and paid a cheap shop to change the struts and one of the wheel bearings. I changed the other wheel bearing and CV axle. Then I changed the lower control arms and discovered the problem. The lower control arm was worn out on the back side. There’s like a rubber material inside where a bolt connects it I think through the frame in the back and that caused the wobbling. This didn’t solve the problem. When I installed the control arm I had to take it apart because the sway bar is bent so I couldn’t get the bolt to line up on the back side. The reason the control arm wore out is because the bent sway bar is vibrating against the control arm. Now the shaking sometimes is about as bad as it was before so I’ve probably worn out this control arm as well.
It also cost me about $1000 to clear up some legal issues that required my attention. This was back in late July shortly after we finished a job in Auburn, Alabama. Actually we finished the job in Auburn, and about two weeks later we spent about a week in Dallas finishing parts of a job they did earlier but couldn’t finish because the contractor stopped paying the sub contractors. At that point I had a little over $6000 when I had to spend the money I spent there. I was visiting my daughter in Chicago, I took her to the indoor skydiving wind tunnel in Lincoln park.
The day before I was pulled over by state police who said I had warrants in Wisconsin. Pulled over for not wearing my seatbelt while wearing my seatbelt. I told the officer why I suspected he pulled me over: Since I had Texas plates he wanted to make contact to see if there was anything in plain view that would give him probable cause to search the vehicle since anyone from out of town, especially from Texas could be trafficking and this would be an opportunity to find quality charges. Years ago, in 2015 I was charged for allegedly writing checks from a bank account in my name after the bank account was closed. There were a total of 6 separate counts all misdemeanors carrying a maximum sentence of 9 months each. I was taken to the county jail but the county wouldn’t accept me because the officer did not have the proper paperwork and no one from the county I had the warrants in in Wisconsin was sending the paperwork.
Thankfully I was able to contact my employer, Mark, who knew a once high profile lawyer who contacted these counties, had one of them suspend the warrant and arrange for the charges to be dropped if I paid the amount that was owed on the checks. That cost me roughly $1000 and another $250 to get my car out of impound.
My plan was to finish this 8 week job that was set to begin the following week after the incident in Chicago. There was supposed to be about a month in between that job and another 8 week job beginning in November which was eventually pushed back. My plan was I would finish that job we were working on, take a month off to organize my material and position myself to begin promoting it, then work the next job and I should have been somewhere between 10 and 15,000 saved.
In the beginning of September with about 4 weeks left on the job I attended a comedy show. During the show there was a couple seated to the left of me who was so obnoxious that they were addressed by the performer and confronted by a couple seated in front of them who were moved after they complained to the staff.
Had I confronted them during the show I anticipated the situation would have escalated based on how they responded to the couple in front of them. After the show I presumed I could state my peace and leave with the people I met seated to the right of me who I was talking and joking with prior to the show beginning, and who I made plans with after the show. Among other things I told the woman that I hoped she developed enough self worth where she wouldn’t have to ruin other people’s nights to attract attention to herself and feel good. Unfortunately they escalated the situation which culminated in her boyfriend or husband grabbing and punching me as I walked away.
I responded by grabbing him and punching him twice. I didn’t realize it at the time but after I hit him the second time he was knocked out on his feet. He grabbed me with both hands and I grabbed him with both hands turning him and tripping him over my leg to put him on his back, but since he wasn’t conscious the back of his head hit the floor. His arms went out to his sides, his eyes were wide open, he was motionless, and he didn’t appear to be breathing.
I ducked under the line as the incident occured at the exit right by the security checkpoint location. I went to the bathroom and took off my button up shirt and just wore my white under shirt. I figured if security was looking for me they’d be looking for a person in a blue button up. Unfortunately I didn’t remember the way to the parking structure because the casino is huge. In fact when I arrived and asked how to get to the location where the show was I was told by the staff that it was up the stairs and about a 6 minute walk. I had to ask directions not once but twice after this altercation to find my way back to the parking structure.
I didn’t do anything wrong. That state requires for self defense the reasonable belief that harm is either imminent or happening, and a reasonable belief that the force being used is not beyond what is required to protect one’s self. I had the reasonable belief that harm was happening to me because I was grabbed and punched. I used only enough force to prevent him from continuing to assault me and did not harm him after I realized that end was achieved. Being in a casino I believed there was video evidence that would serve as proof that this was how the event transpired. Yet at the same time I believed if I would have stayed and waited for security and law enforcement I may have been charged especially if as I originally thought he may have died. I’ve read stories and seen reports of people hitting their head and dying, and although I’ve been in enough physical altercations to see people become temporarily unconscious, I’ve never seen them as completely motionless as he had been, eyes wide open, and not seeing his chest rising.
I talked to the officer who informed me he took a statement from both of them which let me know he was alright, and later Mark from Premier Hospitality had his attorney’s office check for warrants. A few weeks later I was pulled over by the Illinois State Police who ran my name and there were no warrants for my arrest. About two weeks after the incident I did receive a call from the tribal police where the incident took place and explained my claim to self defense. After doing so the officer made some threats but he knew there was no basis for any charges.
Of course it was morally right because imposition is justified to neutralize imposition.
I didn’t know this for a few weeks. I left the job prematurely because if he was dead or seriously injured I did tell the people seated to the right of me where I was working and what I was doing. My identity was easy to find out because the tickets are assigned where the couple to the left of me can say I was seated here and he was seated here. While I knew I would be found innocent based on the video evidence and the law, I didn’t want to go through that at that time if that was the situation. I returned to Texas because my plates were registered to Texas meaning I would blend in better and would be less likely to be caught. As far as feeling that I may have just killed someone I didn’t feel bad because I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, although I did experience some stress from fear of the consequence or I should say the potential legal battle if he had died.
When I left I had about $6000 saved. $550 was gone right away because it was near my daughter’s birthday so I wanted to make sure I sent her money if something happened. After discovering that the man from the altercation at the comedy show was okay and I wasn’t being charged I left to go to Chicago.
While in Texas I began recording presentations of books, started a meetup group, designed and ordered some of my products, and finished compiling written material into themed publications. On my way to Chicago I was responding to CL ads to rent rooms. I spent a night or two at a rest area, then two nights at a hotel, followed by another night at a rest area and I was unable to find anything I wanted to rent. I returned to Texas and after another week in Texas I decided Texas wasn’t for me.
Now I’m in the car rerecording material and creating new outlines to record audio outlines. I was looking at places in Iowa and there are some cheap apartments and studios out there. What’s unfortunate is although I have at least a few months of rent and expenses, I have no proof of income, references, credit, probably cannot pass the background check despite my criminal history being old, and cannot meet the qualifications to rent a place. For the last 4 days I’ve just been moving slowly. Moving from rest area to rest area working on material but also just fucking off a little bit unsure of how to proceed. The point is to not spend money until I know what I want to do, how I’m going to do it, and where I want to be. In the meantime I’ll continue making presentation outlines of written material and recording them. I’ll also work on other material.
10/22/2021
I haven’t gone through my older journal material yet. It helps in the moment to write but looking back on it it doesn’t seem helpful. The recurring struggles seemingly have been and may be for nothing. When I say it doesn’t seem helpful I mean if anyone ever reads any of this while I’m still alive it creates credibility issues with my material. Not that my material is flawed, but it takes a greater level of attention to understand than does the information crafted to appeal to different marketing groups. People are easily persuaded by negative assertions especially if it is about things they don’t care to understand.
Why am I alone? Unlike most people who are homeless and alone, I don’t have any drug dependency issues that caused me to harm people and resulted in them alienating me. I’ve grown apart from the people I knew and they are not honest with me in interaction. A lot of people I knew are dead, some are in prison, some are substance dependent, some live a modified lifestyle from our teenage/ early 20s years, and others are content with their jobs and their families. All of them probably think I’m crazy. Most importantly, none of them are interested in what I’m doing. So I am alone.
Why am I homeless? After I left my job I intended to find a place to rent. Even with some money, no proof of income, poor credit, and criminal record albeit old makes it awfully difficult to rent your own place, and also difficult to even rent a room. On the other side of it, if I maintain a full time job to maintain a space to live, that’s essentially it. That becomes my life, I regress intellectually, and I’m living in an unsatisfactory situation in an unacceptable world. I say I regress intellectually because in order to maintain the job it will require a great deal of emotional upkeep. If that’s my life I kill myself because it doesn’t make sense for me to endure for nothing.
I’m essentially homeless because you cannot sell truth, because there is no demand for it. People want information that reinforces their beliefs not information that challenges it. I want to position myself to earn a modest living through the sale and promotion of my material and ideas. I apparently don’t know how to do this and there is no blueprint for it. How do you gain people’s attention towards something that they want to avoid?
It’s pretty insane to me that I’ve never had anyone demonstrate that they’ve understood anything I wrote. No questions pertaining to anything, no counter points or arguments. Maybe on social media but in those situations outside of subjective subjects like sports there haven’t been any sustained points. As far as my substantive material, just silence. Funny, I’m at a rest stop and there are crickets in the background, like: my material… and crickets.
Why don’t I kill myself? The main reason is the waste of development. I don’t know where the plateau was, and the plateau has its ups and downs depending on my circumstances, stress levels, and obligations which at times obstruct mental processes in regard to focus, but I am a person whose understanding allows him to see life almost removed from it. I’m not going to paint the full picture beautifying myself within what is often a pretty miserable existence, but most of what people think they know is bullshit built on popular assumptions about life that are wrong.
The human mind can be such an inconspicuously evil thing. What I mean by that reduces to very basic mental functions that are verified through psychological results even if the functions themselves are not known to psychology. The first function of the subconscious mind is that the subconscious mind is always set to an objective to produce a positive feeling, including a positive feeling through the removal of a negative feeling. In order for the subconscious mind to produce positive feelings it must maintain the perception that allows objects to produce those feelings. When I say maintain the perception, I’m saying the assignments of what is true and false concerning ideas must remain intact because how things make us feel rely on these assignments staying the same. The subconscious mind is not only avoiding information that will change those assignments, but it is always producing thoughts to justify actions. Social reinforcement is key in cementing things that are wrong, whereby if other people are participating in the same behavior or believe the same things the behavior is right and the things seems true.
I do believe I will be much more satisfied in death than I will be in life. Being alive among this species is an opportunity to advance general understanding, even if it is an unlikely and improbable outcome based on basic subconscious functions and how those functions are manipulated through information that has reached them 1st.
If you were transported back in time to the middle ages, you would recognize that the things people thought and did were false and wrong, and this would probably bother you. You may not be content working the lord’s land to maintain some thatched hut, attending festivals with superstitious rituals, burning witches, subscribing to ideas about the organization of society that were false, among other things that you knew to be untrue and not beneficial. I don’t claim to be an expert on the era but the point is imagine you were among people who were full of shit from top to bottom. What do you do? You can either assimulate, kill yourself, or make an effort to advance the species. You can’t assimilate because you can’t unknow what you already know. You can kill yourself or make an effort to advance the species. Maybe that helps someone reading this to understand why I am at where I am at.
Idiots would say why would anyone want to learn about things that have socially alienated the person responsible for recording them and made him miserable? It isn’t the material or understanding that produces the misery, it is the circumstances, where there is no outlet for it and I am trapped by a lack of resources, a lack of ability to procure adequate resources, and a people who prefer their comfortable lies over things that are true. The understanding and certainty that I have in it is the only thing that provides me peace.
Most of what I write when I’m at low points I don’t share. It’s unbecoming of me to vent my weakness. It usually goes away as quickly as it comes on. The plan was to purchase flyers and use the flyers to promote the website and to talk to people. I bought 10,000 with a 3 day turnaround time. I purchased them on the 18th and they were supposed to be done on the 21st and available for pick up on the 22nd. I was in southern Illinois near St. Louis when I made the order. Shipping would have been about $75. Of course I don’t have a place to receive the flyers so I had to either A: rent a hotel for a week, or B: for the cost of shipping I could drive to Arlington, TX to pick them up. I drove to Arlington to save on the cost of a hotel. I rented a room in Arlington for a few weeks before I left and had a gym membership there so I was looking forward to the return, to be able to workout and shower. I also made $135 on a pretty easy moving gig for a day. First day back was alright.
On the 21st I contacted customer service via the live chat feature through the website. The CS rep told me they were being printed that day and would be ready in the morning. I go to pick them up but on the door to the address it says call and your order will be brought out to you. The name of the company is The Print Place, but the name on the building where you pick it up is called WillCall. Funny name because of my experience; don’t expect your order to be done when we said it will be done, we “Will Call” whenever we get it done. A woman answered the phone and told me my order was not ready, but implied that it would be ready by the end of the day.
Later in the day I went back on the live chat and another CS rep told me they were being printed and said he tried to contact the production manager but couldn’t get ahold of him. I realized later the online CS reps were not at the printing location, and neither the one I chatted with that day nor the one I chatted with the previous day had any information about my order. Later in the day I called back and the lady who was the only person on location in the office where the printing actually takes place said she would check with production and find out about my order. I called again and she said she had 2 customers in the parking lot, confirmed she was the only one there and she was going to check on it. She also told me she leaves at 5pm. At about quarter to 5 I called and this time she asked if I could hold. I was holding but she was talking to someone in person, another customer and apologized profusely about the woman’s order not being completed on the day she needed it. When the woman said she paid extra for that day (the same as I did) and should be priority she was told they have orders from weeks ago that haven’t been completed and that is their priority.
When I spoke with the woman I told her I didn’t presume she had anything different to tell me and she didn’t. She gave a customer service number to call and I requested a refund. I didn’t want to cancel but the likelihood that I would have received my flyers on Monday or even Tuesday was slim and I didn’t want to sit in the DFW area for potentially another week or two waiting.
After that I headed out. I’m at a rest stop and I’ll probably be here until Monday. I can’t do anything until Monday because there are no print shops open on the weekends. Very disappointing.
10/23/2021
Some cunt came to the rest area before 7am and pulled up next to me playing his radio. It wasn’t extremely loud but loud enough where I couldn’t fall back asleep. I was very pissed off but I didn’t have any recourse. People can listen to their radios at rest areas. I went to sleep kind of late last night. I didn’t fall asleep until about 1am. I slept poorly the previous night at Walmart, and the night before that at another Walmart. I’ve been pretty tired all day and didn’t accomplish much. Spent most of the day playing low stakes poker not very well.
I did finish an article about a few pieces of case law that people should know concerning police authority. When I finish this entry I’m going to begin excerpting old journal material and posting it to this section. I might take a walk first. The westbound rest area in Cumby, Texas is probably my favorite rest area, which means something coming from a guy who has spent many nights at many rest areas in many places across the country. It’s clean, has charging ports and wifi in one of the two buildings that has restrooms, it has clean shaded picnic areas, and a giant track that is about 500 steps around.
I saw an article today that was completely absurd. I mean I see and hear a lot of (occasional talk radio) a lot of things that are absurd but this was so petty and disgusting. A teacher in (where else) California was suspended for donning a native american headdress and imitating a stereotypical native song voice to help her students remember a word that represents a function in trigonometry. Is it part of native American culture to wear what she was wearing and sing in that voice? Are native people proud of their culture? If so, what is the problem with a teacher imitating it to help children understand math? How can you be offended by someone imitating your culture? And so the fuck what if you are offended. I was offended when I was woken up by shitty music this morning, that doesn’t mean this man doesn’t have a right to listen to his shitty music. I’m sorry some indiginous people are ashamed of their culture so they don’t want people imitating it for purposes that benefit children. Even if you’re not proud of your culture, the best way to overcome and accept that and move on is to see the humor in it. We’re probably not talking about offending indiginous people, we’re probably talking about ignorant white liberals who fill the voids in their life by attempting to take on what they perceive to be offensive to others.
This is a big part of liberty, understanding that offense that does not impose is subjective. A great majority of indigenous people who hear about this story probably would not be offended. In fact there are probably many more brainwashed white people offended over the news than indigenous people. The moral basis for free speech is the same thing can be said to different people and one person experiences offense and another doesn’t, meaning the words do not impose or in this case the act does not impose and the interpretation is responsible for feeling. Liberty is self contained, in that something subjective that is asserted as morally wrong is wrong because the act does not impose. Those who suspended this teacher (or possibly fired this teacher I don’t remember which it was) are morally wrong for doing that, because they’ve imposed on her for an act that is unimposing.
People live in these myths. The progressives are indoctrinated into myths concerning disadvantage based on race, sexuality, and gender, where all things are interpreted or more accurately misinterpreted to claim this is what’s wrong with the world. They have other misconceptions as well but that’s their core, to shift the focus of disadvantage from financial disadvantage which is the source of all disadvantage regarless of race, sexuality, or sex, onto these groups and subgroups. These superficial differences that are not inherently a source of disadvantage as it relates to liberty and opportunity is the greatest divider of the underclasses that keeps poor, impoverished, and struggling people from achieving class goals. Which is why it is the platform of one of the two business parties because it serves the interest of those who the policy makers act on behalf of.
The other half of politically interested people are christian nationalists, who are indoctrinated into lies about the founding intentions of this country, how this country functions, and the general intentions on which this country has acted and acts. They’re also indoctrinated into christianity but the few positive things promoted from that superstition are squashed by that nationalism. I say positive things in regard to recognizing that systems produce circumstances and unequal opportunities need to be addressed in order for people to be free and to rid ourselves or at least achieve progress towards ridding ourselves of the problems that unequal opportunities for time and money present.
And almost as big as both groups are those who are indifferent to what’s going on around them altogether, although the democrats have been effective in recent years in capitalizing enough on the ignorance of the indifferent through sloganism, that many ignorant and indifferent people have attached themselves to a few opinions about things they know nothing about, and are not really interested in knowing anything about.
This is part of what I mean by people who are full of shit, and from top to bottom means from the garbage man to the professor whose studies are a reflection of his biases and whose ignorance is a product of very limited life experiences. People who will talk about drug use in the country and have never used drugs, sold drugs, or intimately known anyone with drug dependencies. Talk about crime but have never committed a crime, known criminals, or been engaged in that lifestyle or those within that lifestyle. Will talk about violence, gang violence, and haven’t been involved in violence, associated with gang members, or known the feelings that motivate one to commit a violent act. Talk about poor people and poverty yet have never been poor, do not intimately associate with poor people as one from the same socioeconomic standing, and have not personally observed the causes and impediments. People who look at data but don’t have the life experience to really know what they’re seeing and why they’re seeing it. Just a few examples. I’ve written a lot with some specific examples about this that no one reads.
I need to take my airbox apart tomorrow. I think the 7th generation Malibu does not have a pcv valve, they have some weird system that releases oil through a tube into the air intake when this small hole in the intake manifold becomes clogged. This results in oil going into the air intake system and I think I’m at that point. I need to take the air intake manifold off and try to clean up that hole which I may do tomorrow. I just don’t know if there is a gasket. If there is a gasket you probably have to replace the gasket if you pull the manifold off. There shouldn’t be a gasket because it’s just air but there might be. At least I’m going to clean out the hose and clean the throttle body. If this car goes I’m going to be very fucked.
Had a pof chic holler at me today and I intended to meet her for a drink this evening. That shit would be revitalizing. Unfortunately after I told her to hit me up after she got off work this evening she asked where I was. I told her thinking she was nearby but I didn’t recognize the city she was in. When I google mapped the city she was 4 hours away. If she was more sexually expressive I probably would have made the trip. I mean I’m confident that she would have gotten down after a few drinks and become comfortable with my company but that’s a long distance to travel without a little more certainty.
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Took that walk and thought about two things I wanted to add here, but I can only remember one at the moment. We’ll see if it returns to me after I finish the first.
The first is what do I expect to accomplish in the near future. I don’t have general expectations. I obviously have expectations on specific things, like those flyers being printed on the day the company said they were going to be printed was a great expectation, and has resulted in proportionate disappointment. I don’t go without expectations to avoid disappointment, I’m without expectations because I’m more concerned with results. By that I don’t mean results as in how effective I have been, I mean I’m more concerned with seeing what happens and adapting according to what is and is not effective, as opposed to expecting that some result will be produced and being disappointed if it does not.
What do I hope for? Well, I hope that handing out these flyers will produce interest in my material and possibly some products which will provide me with the means to begin seriously organizing somewhere. I obviously hope some people will learn the material and become enthusiastic about what it seeks to promote and accomplish. I hope the material receives attention and becomes a source of controversy and interest, where I have opportunities to address people’s objections.
I was just distracted. I had one hit on the Covid-19 Product Page and I don’t think it was me. I thought about the description, and the description essentially shares the latest data and shows why the danger of covid-19 has been exaggerated. I also point out that the quantifiable portion of the population at risk for death is insufficient to constitute a threat to public safety. That’s even if we take the roughly 20% of the population that has serious underlying medical conditions that actually increase their risk for death and apply the mortality rate of about 6.5% of people who have serious underlying medical conditions.
6.5% of 20 is only 1.3% of the population, which represents less than 4 million people, most of which are represented in the 1.75 million who die of natural causes each year which is about .5% of the population. A virus that cannot kill over 98.5% of the population cannot be considered a threat to public safety used to take away the rights of citizens in protection from it. The 6.5% and the 1.75 million are numbers cited in the book.
I’m not re-stating this just to restate it, there is a new development I wanted to record. Really just a thought but it wouldn’t be understood without providing this brief summary of the description which is available on the Covid 19 Media Project page for free. The precedent for using public safety in protection from an infectious disease was a man who refused a smallpox vaccine and was disputing a fine. The difference between smallpox and covid is like the difference between a dark room and a bright light.
Smallpox had a near 30% mortality rate, was randomly deadly in that it could kill anyone, and it left survivors permanently scarred and impaired sometimes causing permanent blindness. Covid-19 kills only “the weakest segments of the population”, primarily those who are in the last year of their life, and quantifiably is not a threat of permanent harm to about 99% of the population.
The new thought on the matter is this: Imposition on the rights of citizens in the name of public safety has always applied to situations like war, or natural disaster, where the public represented at least a majority of the population but typically situations where the entire population faced a serious threat to life. Like smallpox, where although the maximum death toll would be 30%, 100% of the public could be part of that 30%, not like covid where it isn’t 30%, but about 1%, and only a few percent of the population could be part of that 1%. Meaning 90 some percent of the population is not in danger. It’s just really insane. While at least in most places restrictions are no longer an issue, vaccine mandates are still a source of controversy. Leads into that second thing I wanted to write about.
I interprete the world through the observation of motion. Others interpret the world through impressions, where they see things that cause them to feel a certain way, and draw all kinds of conclusions based on the feeling and what thing is associated with that feeling. For example, dramatic covid impressions, and without any observational context to put these things into cause people to draw conclusions based on how what they saw makes them feel. A report makes them feel scared, or feel sad, and with those feelings come the conclusions that something is dangerous without ever knowing if it is true or not. Danger is relative to other danger in terms of how we manage the risk. This doesn’t apply exclusively to covid, but in general. Also isn’t exclusively a left wing phenomenon either as some on the right who also do it may like to assert.
10/26/2021
It has been a long four days after finding out my flyers would not be finished and the passing weekend where I could reorder. I wasn’t able to make a decision about doing anything until yesterday and so it took an extra day of deliberation. Today I wrote out my options.
Option One: Rent a room and order bargain brand flyers online.
Option Two: Rent a UPS mailbox and order bargain brand flyers online.
Option Two Option One rent a UPS box in Greenville and continue circling these rest areas in Cumby until the flyers arrive.
Option Two Option Two rent a UPS mailbox in DFW where I would have an opportunity to find work while I wait and would be able to use my gym membership to work out and shower.
Option Three: Pay more and place an order with a local printer.
I decided to pay more to have my flyers ordered and be at a location at a certain date.
I don’t have a great degree of confidence in these online printers after this first experience. Now the question is where I will wait because I’m still going to have a week before I can pick them up. I chose a printer outside of Texas. It’s difficult to justify going there in advance since I’m going there to pick up the flyers, will probably do some distribution, and then I’ll be on to another destination. It makes more sense to return to DFW, use my gym membership for exercise and shower, and maybe find some work while I’m waiting. The issue was it was very hot at night and It’s also more difficult to sleep in a parking lot than it is at the rest area. However, it’s cooling off the rest of the week so the only issue is finding a place to sleep. The nearest rest area to the gym is 75 miles. That’s conservatively 2.5 gallons each way, probably closer to 3 considering traffic getting in and out of the DFW area. Meaning it costs me about $17 and 150 miles on my car to sleep at the nearest rest area if I go to the gym every day.
Part of me thinks I should have waited for my original order to be done but the woman told me they were 2 weeks behind, meaning I’ll still receive this order before I would have received that order. Not to mention I would have been bound by that delay, where everyday I’m calling about the order and being strung along, it creates stress and uncertainty that negatively impacts my mood but also becomes a distraction to other things. Do not print with printplace, you don’t want that problem. I went with a company whose name in English is Printing Printing. LOL Imprenta Printing.
There was a period where I couldn’t reach my sales rep shortly after he told me he was going to confirm and get back to me. I began reaching out to another company that was even more expensive who I was going to try to encourage to give me a better price through the prospect of repeat business, a first time customer incentive discount. Imprenta gave me a discount which is really why I went with them. Their price came in just under the upper limit of what I was willing to pay. I was hoping for a 15% discount which would have brought the other company’s price to right around that same place.
11/5/2021
I never knew that Walmart wifi reached the parking lot until yesterday night. Half the reason I eat fast food once a day is usually because I need to use the wifi. I picked up the flyers on Tuesday. They look better than I anticipated. One side is the american flag painted on a wall and over it is the substance of the flyer consisting of 4 points of general emphasis. I turned up the transparency on the picture so the text would be easier to read. I was worried that I turned the transparency up too much and the wall with the flag wouldn’t look good, or that I didn’t turn it down enough and the text would be difficult to read. The wall with the flag is visible but the words are easy to read. I probably could have turned the transparency down some but it came out good nonetheless.
The other side of the flyer and I’ll post the pictures below is the name of the website libertyandtruth.org a picture of the flag with the sun shining down and the phrase truth over everything and liberty is true.
The intended symbolism is to recognize the writing on the wall, with the wall being popular misconceptions, and in doing so we create a nation where the United States lives up to its ideals, of liberty and justice for all. The ideals are good but the ideals are not governing principles in the creation of policy. While the American flag is a symbol of tyranny based on historical foreign and domestic policy, it is also a symbol that represents the people within its borders. According to history it is a negative symbol, but since it is still representative of us, it’s up to us to reverse that course and have it represent the things that so many people have been indoctrinated to believe it represents.
I also understand that no one is going to see the symbolism, and had I not created it I probably wouldn’t see it either so it isn’t a knock on anyone for missing it. I know that displaying the flag is going to be inviting to some and create prejudice in others. My content is offensive to all.
Yesterday I distributed less than 10 flyers for about 10 minutes and decided I wanted to rethink my approach primarily due to the discomfort associated with distributing them in a place I knew I wasn’t supposed to be distributing them. I was at a Walmart in Rockwell on my way back to Arlington. Instead of trying a new place, I drowned myself in thoughts about the futility of the effort, played poker very poorly, and then sank into a deep depression for the remainder of the day knowing I didn’t do what I was supposed to be doing. I have a journal entry from that day I’m not going to post because it is dark and colored by those feelings of failure.
Today I was going to distribute flyers whether or not the effort would be effective because I didn’t want to endure the feelings of failure I endured the previous day. I went to the gym, got something to eat, and then I went to a Walmart and began distributing flyers. This only lasted for about 10 minutes before someone told on me. A worker came out and asked me if I had the permission of the manager. I told her no and she told me I could go to customer service to ask for a manager to get permission.
I went to customer service but the line was long. If I believed it was realistic or there was at least a 50/50 probability that I would be given permission I would have waited, but it seems unlikely. The manager is not going to give me permission to promote a political social justice message because it may be offensive to some of the customers. There’s no benefit for Walmart in allowing me to piggyback the traffic they’re creating. I walked out past the woman who told me I needed permission and she asked me if I was given permission. I joked “yeah he said it was cool”. LOL. She asked who I talked to and I told her I was only joking, that the line was too long and I was going to go to a different location. Then I asked her if I could leave her with a flyer and she declined. Probably offended by the American flag side of the flyer. She harms her own interest in that round up gratuity is a program that would increase her hourly pay by about 3 to 5 dollars per hour if not more depending on whether she is full or part time. If I explained round up gratuity to the manager there is a chance that they would give me permission but it still isn’t likely.
Caddy corner from the Walmart I saw a strip mall. I went to the strip mall because If I’m walking back and forth distributing in front of different stores it’s less likely that I’ll be asked to leave since I’m not camping out on one store’s property. There wasn’t a lot of traffic except outside of the Albertsons. I also thought I may attract negative attention if stores see me walking back and forth in front of their stores. By negative it seems possible that someone would call the police to investigate a man who is walking back and forth in front of the stores. I stopped outside of Albertson’s and I was allowed to distribute uninterrupted for over an hour. There were several employees who watched me distribute flyers and didn’t seem concerned with it.
I may have distributed somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 flyers during that period and had a few worthwhile interactions. There was a woman who accepted a flyer whose car stopped running. She thought the battery cable may have been loose and asked if I would check it. It took me a minute to figure out her hood popping mechanism. After I opened the hood I twisted the cable which restored power and she was able to start the car. Actually it was probably an early 2000s suv, suburban or tahoe. Her connection wasn’t loose, the bolt on the terminal was tight. It appeared she had a short in the positive cable. I told her she needed to get a new positive cable. I forgot how those are set up, if the cables are singular or if they’re tethered. I should have directed her to youtube but I told her the basic elements, that the terminal connects to the alternator and she may have to remove the alternator which is 3 bolts. I may be mistaken but I think there’s just a wire harness and then the connection to alternator. IDK, I should have referred her to youtube but until she fixes it or has it fixed at least she knows that if she loses power all she needs to do is lift up on the cable.
I also had a conversation with a preacher and I had to address his bullshit, but did so respectfully and we both were willing to listen to what the other had to say. I didn’t complete the whole contradiction or Christian hypocrisy. I began the summary but was interrupted because he didn’t know there was another point to it. The Christian hypocrisy is that according to christianity god commands that you love your neighbor as you love yourself. The christian deity gives two options to people, to agree to be his servants and believe in him, or to face eternal hell. These are options the creator would not want to have for himself, to be the servant of another being or to face eternal hell. Which means the christian deity does not love others as he loves himself but tells others to do so, which is hypocrisy. Fitting in that Jesus calls people hypocrites in the gospels and then says you’ll be judged by the same measure that you judge others. LOL.
The christian conception of heaven is actually hell because all beings want to do what they want to do and the christian conception of heaven is eternal servitude to another being. I didn’t get to finish the lecture but I did get to explain that all people want to do what they want to do at all times, so action that imposes on others is wrong, and action that does not impose (or removes or prevents imposition) is right. He asked if it was his turn and grabbed his book. I interrupted him, telling him he was going to quote something from the bible without acknowledging what I said. He told me he wasn’t going to do that. Then he said (maybe not an exact quote but is the exact sentiment) O man, god has led you to knowledge of what is right. Then he summarized the interaction and said I have respected you and you have respected me and we parted company on good terms. He left me a piece of paper.
I did not make good use of the opportunities for interaction I had. Everytime someone asked me what it is I”m promoting I provided generic answers but later I realized that anytime someone asks me this I can provide a short explanation of liberty beginning with the human constant, and include circumstantial trapping. I’ll do better on this in the future.
There was an elderly lady who moved extremely slowly. I wanted to help her put her groceries in the car since it would have been much easier for me than it is for her but I also didn’t want to take that away from her. As old as she is, she may appreciate the help or she may not. She probably has a certain amount of pride in still being able to drive herself to the grocery store, pick out her items, and load them into the car. At that age and in her physical state things like that are accomplishments, and the physical activity so long as it doesn’t result in injury is probably also good for her.
There was a man who left the store with just a redbull and later reentered after I gave him a flyer. When he returned to the store I thought he was going back to tell on me but it turns out he had more shopping to do and maybe bought the red bull for someone waiting for him and then went back in to do his shopping. As he left the store he said you’re going to help me get some money? I said maybe, hopefully. The truth is I cannot get him money. Sure if he qualifies for the balance stimulus maybe or hopefully I could be the catalyst for getting him some money but the truth is, “liberators do not exist, the people must liberate themselves.” By this I mean the only way he can get some money through one or more of my ideas is if people learn about these ideas and we demand that these ideas are carried forward by congress. We can get him money, I cannot get him money.
I made another error in conversation being asked by a person if this was a republican group. I should have told him this group doesn’t recognize either party as representing the interest of disadvantaged people in this country but republicans are the lesser of two evils. Republicans are the lesser of two evils because they’re not promoting baseless divisions among the population by asserting that race, gender, and sexuality is a source of disadvantage. They’re not wasting money on programs that do not significantly improve people’s opportunities and quality of life to politically grandstand. The republicans, the same as the democrats, serve the interests of industry and the deception they use is less harmful as it is rooted in nationalism and religion. Which is still harmful but less than asserting race, gender, and sexuality as a source of disadvantage and they don’t want to invent issues to avoid fixing class based issues. Other than taxes and what the democrats are trying to do the republicans think America is pretty great because it’s great for them and fuck everyone else.
I told him the organization is more to the center which is accurate but implies other things to conservatives or even moderate republicans. The positions I take are the positions that are consistent with liberty, where individual liberty is greatest, the greatest net liberty.
I’m essentially flyering to find needles in haystacks. Where some rare people go to the website, understand the home page and then become interested in the content. I don’t know what that number is. I could be 1 out 100, 1 out of 1000, 1 out of 10,000, or maybe some ratio that exceeds even that. Even if it is 1 out of 10,000, given my efforts to this point, where over a 7 year period I’ve failed to attract the serious interest of even 1 person, if it is 1 out of 10,000, spending $500 on flyers and what appears to be an investment of a great deal of time maybe the effort is worth it. Of course it’s a very inefficient approach.
I have a stunt in mind I hope I don’t have to resort to but after distributing these flyers I may need to attempt it. It doesn’t endanger anyone’s safety. Possibly my own depending on how I proceed with it if we get to that place and hopefully we won’t.
I was just driving back from a go puff delivery and I saw people standing on the street corner with something in their hands. Seemed like they were promoting something and it gave me the idea to maybe make a sign and stand on a busy street corner. Not asking for money, just want to give you a flyer, libertyandtruth.org. This could be a very effective marketing strategy since I get website promotion through the sign itself and since it is in a public space it should be protected free speech.
11/7/2021
Yesterday after leaving the gym there was a go puff spot that opened up and then another that opened up later in the day so I spent yesterday doing deliveries for 11 hours. I canceled the hours for Monday. I had hours for 7 to 9am and then 11pm to 3am. I can’t imagine the early hours are very busy and even the late hours on a Monday probably are not very busy and it will affect my sleep schedule.
I’m beginning in Oklahoma City. The plan is I will create a 6 day schedule and sleep in my car and then spend the 7th day in a hotel planning my next week. I’m going to diversify my promotional campaign. I’m going to spend a few days a week holding a sign to advertise my site on freeway off-ramps. Then I’m going to ask people if they have a minute to let me tell them about the website, and I’ll begin with basic components of liberty as the basis and go into solutions. The difficult part of this approach is finding people who will give me a few minutes of their time. People in public spaces are typically trying to fulfill their purpose for being in public and getting on with their day. I may see if I can get a permit and go door to door. Otherwise bus stops may be a place of interest since people are already waiting. Bus stops may be of interest for other purposes like hanging flyers.
Yesterday I did have an interesting exchange on the subject of vengeance and justice which is below. The video was about a man who killed her daughters boyfriend because he alledgedly sold her into a sex slavery situation. It flashed back to the 1984 case where a man kidnapped and molested someone’s son and the father killed him. The account of the father who killed the boyfriend is dubious, which is to say I’m skeptical as to whether or not the boyfriend sold her into the lifestyle as the father claims. Below is my comment, a response, and my response to the responder. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mxcPISPkrA&lc=UgwJ6WoleuT__q0bxjN4AaABAg.9UOTCUtyp-R9UOc05PbTzx)
There are few things more beautiful than a well deserved act of vengeance.
Vengeance is Justice’s older brother with anger issues.
Vengeance is fractional justice because an injured party experiences positive feelings in knowing that someone who has harmed them has been harmed; which subtly contributes to restoration, or making the injured party whole. Sometimes vengeance is the greatest justice. Justice is the righting of a wrong and when there is injury, justice as mentioned is making the injured party whole, restoring the party to where they were prior to that injury taking place.
In the example of the pedophile shot by the father, is there anything that could make the child feel better than the perpetrator paying for the act with his life? More importantly, is there anyone who would make the child feel happier about having done this than his father? The same for the injury of the father where nothing is more restorative than for him to kill the person who harmed his child. I don’t want to beat this horse to death as I’ve made it in other places, but I have 0 sympathy for adults who harm children unprovoked. The reason being is the act reveals a deeper corruption of their values and decision making process. The act reveals that the anticipated personal gratification is greater than the feelings the individual experiences in an anticipation of having harmed a child. If you have no other moral prohibitors, the idea of a child being harm should prohibit the individual from proceeding with the act.
I’m not so sure of the other case just based on my experience with people in that lifestyle (criminality/drugs). If it happend as described and the boyfriend sold his daughter to a sex trafficking outfit against her will then maybe he is justified, but that often isn’t how shit goes down. Boyfriend\girlfriend are drug addicts and when times get tough if the dope man likes the chic she might start fucking the dopeman. She might become one of the dopeman’s chics, he might start pimping her, and she stays content because she has drugs, security, and might like having sex for money. I’m not saying that is what happend, but it’s more likely than the boyfriend brought her somewhere, was given money, and then the woman couldn’t leave and was forced to do drugs and have sex with people.
Here we go. I’m not sure how long I will spend in OKC. There is decent weather for the next 10 days, so I may spend up to two weeks there depending on developments.
11/8/2021
I sat with a sign by a fairly busy exit to a shopping mall for about 6 hours total today. I had two brief rather insignificant conversations, one with a homeless woman who didn’t really understand what I was saying to her, and another with a man who pretended he was interested but probably wasn’t actually interested. He said he was for liberty and truth but then returned the flyer telling me he was going to check it out. Once it became dark I began taping flyers to bus stops pavilions in areas that were not designated for paid advertising.
So far the sign holding is a disappointment. It yielded about 20 hits which is better than 5 hits on 2 hours of handing out flyers in Fort Worth but it’s still only generating about 3 hits an hour if all the hits were even driven by the sign. The worst part isn’t necessarily that there were only 20 hits, what’s worse is there were no other page hits. This has been an issue for some time. I have tried using my solutions page, my platform page, as well as the liberty and truth summary page to begin the homepage and I’ve had the same result each time. I’ve had many days with double digit hits where there may be one hit on another page and that’s it.
It’s difficult because the content is so broad and substantive and people’s attention span and frame of reference for real shit is so limited. People are attracted to cliches and ideas that exist in perception but not in reality. The bigger issue is that the general public is extremely ignorant and tunneled into whatever bs they’ve been funneled into. People are in the constant pursuit of information that reinforces their perception, and their perception is built on bs. Anything with any substance will seem foreign. They’ll look at it, not understand what they’re reading, then proceed with their day and never return.
I also performed very poorly in attempting to run down liberty. As I mentioned I only had those two opportunities and I was derailed on the first attempt because the woman didn’t understand what I was talking about. Playing poker probably didn’t help either.
I think I’m going to put the liberty and truth summary back on the homepage and try that for a day. Then I’ll try an updated platform page. Then I’ll try the solutions page. Then I’ll try a very brief summary and see if this will encourage people to look at some of the books or other pages. I’d try the latter first but I don’t feel like writing it now. Today I went with the journal entry below for my homepage. I tried this because it’s a narrative I thought people would be able to follow and shows how liberty and truth begins with efforts to find where interests converge to create opportunities for income. If I were more stable I might try to execute the idea summarized in a journal entry. Unfortunately I don’t have that stability and even if I did, execution of the idea would consume all of my time and what I’m trying to accomplish is worth more than that one idea.
Home Page Journal Entry
I woke today intent on standing with the sign advertising my website to begin my week of promoting in Oklahoma City. I went to 3 different Walmart locations before I decided upon a location. I did give 1 homeless person 2 dollars and a small stack of flyers I asked him to give to people who give him money. One Walmart location I left because there were already people there with signs. Sure our purposes are different, but I feel like an area that is inundated with people flying signs to make money are less likely to even look in the direction of someone holding a sign much less read it.
As I pulled off I was thinking of ways I could utilize the homeless population. I thought about buying them shirts with my website and logo. I’d already written this before but it spawned other thinking on the matter that morphed into a public income opportunity as well as an income opportunity for homeless people and the addressment of what some consider a public nuisance.
It began with an opportunity to help the homeless. As I passed two seemingly homeless people I thought about the one’s holding the signs. How if they are willing to hold signs for money they could definitely negotiate with local businesses to be paid for what they are already willing to do. It would probably be more lucrative to hold a sign advertising for a business than it would be panhandling. The businesses would have to be flexible with their schedule where a person checks in with the business, picks up their sign, and is paid when they end their shift and can end their shift whenever they want.
In researching laws about posting signage I came across an article that Oklahoma City recently lost a million dollar lawsuit about an ordinance designed to keep people from panhandling on their medians. While this idea will not solve homelessness, it can reduce or eliminate the presence of people panhandling on their medians. You still have people with signs, but in one instance you have people with signs who are paid advertisers on sidewalks, and in the other you have people begging for money on your medians. If people know homeless people can receive money for advertising holding signs on the sidewalk, then people stop giving homeless people money who stand on the medians and homeless people stop begging for money on the medians.
This can be accomplished through the initiative of the homeless, the initiative of businesses, or the initiative of a third party. A third party would contract with businesses and charge the business an hourly rate for their sign to be shown in public. The most effective strategy would be block signs where non-competing companies are featured on the sign. In this a businesses may be able to have their logo on a sign for 2 to 3$ an hour or less. If the workers are paid $10 an hour, and it costs $5 an hour in facilitating the service for the third party to manage quality assurance and payroll, a sign that contains 10 logos only costs a business $1.50 an hour for their logo to be displayed publicly in a high traffic area. Which compared to non-live advertising is probably extremely expensive but a person holding a sign is infinitely more attention grabbing.
The third party will become associated with creating opportunities for homeless people and the business’ image will benefit from that association.
This is what libertyandtruth.org is about. Understanding how everyone’s interest can be served through the creation of opportunity, which makes people freer.
Back to the Tee Shirt idea. A similar third party could do the same thing with tee shirts. This could be much less expensive than signing. A third party contracts with businesses to pay people to wear a shirt with their logo. Again, we can do blocks of advertising or charge a higher rate for a single advertiser. Then the company advertises a rate to the public offering to pay them to wear their shirts. I don’t have any idea what the rate would be, but even if it’s as low as $5 per day, there are a lot of people who could use an extra $35 a week and not have to worry about what shirt they’re going to wear. I think it could and should be much higher than that, at least in the neighborhood of $10 per day and of course what a person is paid would vary based on their general exposure to the public. A person who works selling concessions downtown would be more valuable for shirt marketing than a person who works at a factory that doesn’t have to wear a uniform and can wear the tee shirt.
(Note:. This was a bad idea. Just something thought about in the moment. Could have benefited me, if I had the resources to buy and distribute about 1000 shirts, where if half the homeless population was wearing the same shirt with a logo and website, those impressions could probably drive some attention to the website.)
The far left would say this would turn people into billboards for evil corporations. Many small businesses will also be able to afford the service, but I begin with the understanding that all human problems are a product of self deception and unequal opportunities for individuals to have money and time. Human happinesses requires 1 of 2 foundations. A: A person has a job that provides them with an income sufficient for accumulation, and enough time and money to do as they please. B: A person does something they enjoy doing and earns an income sufficient to meet their needs. I’m thinking first about how to improve income opportunities because this is a root of human dissatisfaction, manifesting itself in drug dependency, crime, subscriptions to divisive and fictitious information, and other behavior that is not beneficial to our species. The Balance Stimulus, Round Up Gratuity, Lowest Paid Employee Wage Disclosure Marketing, and Centers for Economic Planning are all efforts to address economic inequality, by increasing income opportunities, and providing people the means to be free. The summary of these ideas can be found on the Solutions Summary page, and the comprehensive outlines are available in the book The American Prosperity Proposals.
Do not reduce LibertyAndTruth.org to an organization that only seeks to improve income opportunities. This is emphasized because it will have the greatest impact on individual liberty. LibertyAndTruth.org is also interested in addressing popular misconceptions and advancing the understanding of liberty as the basis for morality; and motion as the basis for truth and subconscious processes.
Please explore the website and please comment. Truth offends because people’s internalized lies are the basis for their happiness. In order for things to make people feel good it requires that their lies remain true in their minds. I mention this human function of filtering information because if I write something that you don’t like or agree with, I want to see that comment. Good, bad, or ugly, I want that dialogue. I’m not currently accepting donations, but if you want to help out you can buy a book. I retain most of the money from book sales, whereas the tee shirts and hats I only receive 10% of the proceeds and are more promotional than they are revenue generating.
I don’t know how long I will be in OKC. I planned on a week. Off to a slow start today but I wanted to write down these few thoughts before I began.
11/12/2021
This is the end. Hopefully this end is a new beginning. I’m not going to be able to reach people through the tactics I’m presently employing. It isn’t difficult to understand my material if there is sufficient interest and attention, but I don’t believe I can generate that attention as some random person coming from the circumstances I come from, especially since no matter what your perspective is I’m challenging many of people’s basic assumptions about the world. Many people are so limited in what they can grasp because they hold so many contradictory ideas that they’ve lost the ability to understand when something is, and then connect other things that are true from that point. Many people are unable to distinguish fact from opinion, where even words have become the slave of peoples opinion, and this is a product of opinions becoming fact based on the popularity of the opinion. People are not concerned with the subjects, they’re concerned with the subject appearing a certain way that reinforces their perception, for what that perception means to the joy they get out of life.
No one wants to hear the truth, and I also identify the functions that produce this behavior, and no one is interested in hearing that either. It’s kind of like I’m calling you an asshole, you don’t want to hear that, and then you definitely don’t want me to tell you not just why you’re an asshole, but how you’re an asshole. That’s what it feels like for people when they discover their deity isn’t real, this nation was not founded with good intentions, that US foregn policy has been the most destructive force on this planet since the end of WWII, and was just as ambitious with less capability prior to WWII, or when I show you that a police shooting was justified based on the points of action and law, or that race, gender, and sexuality is not a source of disadvantage, that gun control does not prevent people from who want to kill other people from doing so, that no person should ever have to submit to the authority of another person because they lack the means to resist force or the threat of force, that immigration is not a problem one way or the other because ICE and CBP are keeping the amount of illegal immigrants from the southern border below 12 million, and a population of illegal immigrants below 12 million has proven not to negatively impact the opportunities of Americans, to provide a few examples.
I think about the balance stimulus, and how I believe most of the top 50% would be against it not because they think it’s a bad idea, but because an empowered bottom 50% doesn’t give them much to feel comparatively proud about. Many would rather continue to waste money on government programs and nonprofits that do not create meaningful opportunities so they can maintain a large enough group to look down on. There will definitely be some of that.
I smoked some weed so this isn’t as fluid as it otherwise would be.
The point is, holding signs, hanging flyers, and handing out flyers talking to people who really don’t want to talk to you is not going to attract the attention I need and we need as fast it is needed.
My second day in Oklahoma City I saw the Oklahoma University Press and thought about submitting my books to them. I reviewed the process and it takes a long time to get a response, and I’ve already been through it with journals and you wait weeks just to be given a generic rejection.
What I decided to do was to email the editor and give him cause for concern that might cause him to be interested in reading my material. The email begins:
Imagine someone received an email from a person submitting work to a university publisher and the person who received the email didn’t review the email or the content submitted. What would be the repercussions for the recipient if within the email or material there were red flags that the sender was potentially a threat to public safety, and the failure to review the material put the public in danger?
I think it is more likely than not that he will probably contact the police. He may read it and have others read it but I think he’ll probably delegate the reading of the material to the police who, based on that paragraph, will have to read it. They’re not going to find anything in there that is threatening to public safety, but 1: at least someone will be reading it, and probably more than one person because there are going to be things one person doesn’t understand that they may pass onto others.
The police will have nothing to arrest me for. A threat is a promise to fulfill some harmful act and every statute I’ve seen on terrorist threats or even threats contains the words “to commit” in the qualification, meaning you have to say you’re going to do something to satisfy the legal definition of a threat.
All I’ve done is asked a question. Any email could contain threats to public safety, and I’m merely asking what the repercussions would be for a person who received such an email and material and failed to read it. It’s the same as if I were selling those heart beat scanners that fearful people can use to see if someone is in their car, and I ask someone what would happen if someone was in their back seat the next time they got in their car? Whether they choose to check the back seat before getting in or buying the product is up to them. I haven’t stated any intention to do any harm to them or anyone else.
The question is whether I’m pursued for sending the email or not. I could imagine a situation where it becomes blown out of proportion and my whereabouts become important enough to the police to make some news. Then the longer I remain at large the more exposure I would receive. Although I haven’t done anything, my material could create enough of a cause for concern that the police or perhaps other state or federal agencies may want to talk to me.
On paper I’m a great candidate for domestic terrorist. In application, I’m true to what I understand, and I understand it to be wrong to harm people unless required to prevent or neutralize imposition. Collective imposition cannot be assigned to specific individuals, and harming the general population doesn’t neutralize collective imposition. Secondly, it doesn’t advance any of my interests. Without knowing me, the positions I take definitely create cause for concern but what distinguishes me from those who are terrorists is the depth and consistency of my positions. So, maybe nothing happens but they choose to continue to ignore me.
If that’s the case then I’ll write more university press editors, until someone decides to read, understand, and support my material. I’m starting with one because I need to see what the response is. If I send out 100, and I am charged with something, even when I beat it, I may have to go and do this in multiple states and multiple counties. Which is to say even though I’m not guilty of anything, now my time is occupied by going to multiple court dates.
11/22/2021
It is absolutely insane. I arrived at Walmart in Las Cruces, and for the first few minutes I was in the store everyone had a mask on. Myself and literally a few others represented all of the people in and around the store who did not have masks on the whole time I was there. I was not ready to see that. It created a few awkward interactions. I was angry and aghast with the near unaminonity, venting to myself that people were stupid, and slow. It means no one in this entire area understands why they are doing what they are doing.
It means none of those people are capable of basic risk comparison, and will do what people tell them to do without understanding why they’re doing it. Even if there is excessive concern about the effectiveness or safety of vaccines, you still have a population whose idea of the danger of the virus is grossly exaggerated. Here’s why.
I’m not going to go over the numbers they are available in the covid 19 media project introduction (The introduction is free on the product page) but I will restate the conclusion. That covid-19 kills only the weakest segments of the population, where the likelihood of dying of covid 19, is about the same as your chances of dying of natural causes in the next 12 months. Not those with underlying medical conditions, not those who are obese or have high blood pressure not coupled with serious conditions, the extremely sick, and the extremely elderly. Essentially the same people who would die if infected with the flu are at risk of death if infected with covid 19. If you didn’t take these precautions against the flu during flu season, (and I’ve been around the public during those months prior to covid and people did not) then you have no reason to take these precautions against covid 19. The fact that you don’t know this is evidenced by wearing the mask. If you’re willing to change your behavior about one thing you don’t understand, how many other things do you do the same for?
I was a little off surrounded by all these mask wearers. I was also a little high and trying to figure shit out on the fly which probably didn’t help. A Walmart associate unlocked a case and retrieved some items for me. I think she told me to have a good day, and I said thank you, or I expected her to say have a nice day and said thank you, and then I said yes Ma’am. It was a strange moment, felt stupid about it. (subtle loss in self for being off in a social interaction) I was venting to myself about the masks as two associates walked past me. Shortly after this I was commenting to myself about the items I was considering purchasing. A store associate asked me if everything was alright. I didn’t really get it at first because my first thought is wtf do you mean? I didn’t respond the first time he asked. He asked again and I said I’m good and he said let him know if I needed anything. I was probably showing my unease with the whole situation. Other than this it may be strange for some people to see someone reasoning with themself out loud.
There was an interesting moment when I left the store where I revealed an important element of my and moral behavior. I had a cart full of items and there was a line at check out. A man entered the line behind me with a box of cat food. I think it was cat food. He commented to someone that he had to get food for the kitties. I asked him if he wanted to go in front of me. He was hesitant and I told him I would rather wait a little bit to avoid you having to wait a long time, and he thanked me and took the spot in front of me.
I would experience a negative feeling subtly, not deep because it isn’t an obligation but a subtle negative feeling for feeling like I imposed on his time. I ask him to go ahead of me not exclusively to avoid the subtle negative feeling, which is the pursuit of a positive feeling, but also for the subtle positive feeling in having prevented imposition.
There was another positive interaction at the check out. Just a normal interaction in that setting which was positive because it seemed so fucking weird in that store. LOL. The woman seemed concerned about wasting the bags I pulled off that I was unable to open, and asked me if I’d take the bags, which I did. Can never really have enough walmart bags. They’re garbage bags when you’re living in a car living. She also agreed with me when I told her I didn’t want an item because it cost significantly more than I thought it did. $50 and it was listed at 8.99. She seemed to agree that it seemed like a high price for that item. It was a thick yoga mat that was placed above a price that read 8.99.
While I was in the car going through the radio stations I heard a report that there was no anger coming from the Biden Administration over what happened in Waukesha. I googled Waukesha and a report read that a man after a domestic violence incident ran his car into a Christmas parade killing 5 and injuring nearly 50 people. This is how events are presented to people, what did the people you like say about the people you didn’t like, or what did the people you like say. BIden showed compassion for the victims if the people you like like Biden are telling you about this “tragedy”, or BIden didn’t show enough anger and indignation for the atrocity committed by the perpetrator if you like the Let’s Go Brandon people. While that is funny, what isn’t funny is that’s about the extent of people’s political understanding.
Neither position is relevant. Obviously no one wants to be ran over by a person while they’re with their family at an event that is supposed to be fun for children. What caused this? Without knowing any of the details, only knowing what the man did and what he did preceding this act we can know what motivates such an act.
Love in this country and the world over has been beaten like a drum into the minds of people on this planet since they were born. Love is a substitute for liberty. An example every woman can probably relate to who has ever had a man locked up is jail talk. When a man is locked up he genuinely wants the things he says he wants in that moment because his circumstances are so restrictive and he finds solace in those ideas when he is faced with those circumstances. When he is released and regains his freedom, he can’t remain true to any of the shit he said. If he becomes locked back up again he suddenly wants all those things and is going to be all those things he said he was the last time.
Beyond love being a substitute for liberty, and I’m talking about romantic love, (although other forms as well) people are brought up to believe that their first priority in life is finding their soulmate, or the one, or whatever you call a lifelong committed romantic partner. These ideas are brought to them through tv shows, movies, music, the images projected by people in life, as well as many other sources. As a result, people have an inflated value of these partnerships. When a person’s ideas about their life and happiness rely too heavily on their relationship, if it appears to be ending it drags the rest of this person’s life down with it, because this relationship is the foundation of all their other objectives. Therefore during consequence processing it doesn’t matter if the consequence is probable, and if the severity is the greatest, they have no anchoring objectives in the moment where the consequence will obstruct that objective and prevent them from proceeding. As I’ve explained in the decision making process in Assignment, Sequencing, and Comparison, in the decision making process, if the probability of a consequence is high, and the severity is high, the decision is between the value of the immediate objective, and the value of the anchoring objectives the immediate objective has a consequence for. In these situations where the failure of that relationship means the failure of all other anchoring objectives, the value of the immediate objective is higher than anchoring objectives because the anchoring objectives cease to have value because they’re based on maintaining that relationship as they want it to be. Or at least maintaining that relationship with the possibility of it becoming what they want it to be.
This applies to this particular incident and domestic violence in general. This idea is supported by the danger police officers face in responding to domestic violence calls. Donut Operator, who is a former police officer and presents stories on crime often comments that domestic violence cases are some of the most dangerous calls for officers to go on. He often says this because there is a lot of use of force analysis that occurs during domestic violence calls. This doesn’t apply to mass shootings or mass killings in general which vary in cause.
Whether or not it is applicable to this situation I’m not completely sure, but as mentioned love is often a substitute for liberty. Where even if the anchoring objectives of this individual are not directly tied to the relationship, where the other party’s presence is necessary for the obtainment of anchoring objectives, those objectives may be tied to the stability of the relationship, financial dependency. Or the individual may not have anchoring objectives outside the relationship because he doesn’t have the means to pursue things of greater importance than the relationship. Unfortunately I don’t have time to look up the details of this event.
A few days prior to this I read there was a professor who wrote a book coining the term Minor Attracted Person, and responses that appeared he was trying to normalize or promote the label and people who acted on such attraction. I haven’t read the book so I could be wrong. I’m going off of his statement that I either read or heard in the report. He’s not trying to normalize the behavior by creating the label, where next week it’s going to be LGBTQM, and the behavior is promoted. He’s merely trying to get people to talk about it so he can better understand these people, because in understanding these people, it allows himself and others to figure out how the value of the acts, and the behavior itself can be stopped or reversed.
This is a shortcoming of psychological methods. Their approach to study thoughts, feelings, and behavior begin with categorization, and then there will be MAPs and subcategories of the MAPs. Within these subcategories there may be MAPS who have never acted on their attraction and those who have. In categorizing the habits and explanations they will try to instill the value from the one group into the other to rehabilitate the MAPs that have acted on their attraction. Within these groups there will be a lot of crossover. Other tactics and strategies will be developed to create behavior modification programs for the acting MAPs. Sometimes the tactics will be effective and other times they won’t. The problem with this approach is the problem is never really addressed in most cases. If behavior modification works it works primarily off of faith in accepting something as true, and so long as that explanation doesn’t conflict with other things important to them that they believe are true, it can be true to the person but not actually true. The root causes of them acting on their attraction, or even the attraction itself is never fully understood because despite similar values between other MAP people, the actual explanation is very different on a person to person basis.
The point is, this guy has been suspended from his position at the university and subjected to tweets and other public attacks for trying to do something that is good. At least according to his statement and what I believe he is trying to do, there could be things in his book that suggest other things, but I doubt it. It makes more sense for the media to present the story from the perspective of those who misrepresent it, because it attracts a lot more attention to suggest that there’s a professor trying to normalize pedophillia, than it does that there’s a professor who is conducting research to better understand it. I could be wrong, I’m going off of very little information.
Tomorrow is the beginning of a potentially big day. I leave people with this journal entry because it may be some time before I return to post. It’s potentially a big day since it will take some time before I know what if anything has happened, and before others know what has taken place.
11/24/2021
I’ve sent an email designed to have my material read. I also know that this email may be interpreted as terroristic or threatening, and some of my material which is critical of how systems function could cause me to be perceived as someone who could carry out an act of domestic terrorism. I would not.
The email isn’t terrorist and doesn’t even qualify as threatening as I’ve already written, a threat has to contain the promise to commit a harmful act . Although not my intention, a foreseeable consequence of this email is an overreaction where law enforcement considers me a high priority for detention and questioning. Again, not my intention, but something that potentially serves my interests.
It is potentially interest serving if they reach out to the media for assistance and I am mislabeled a terror suspect. In addition to the potential for defamation lawsuits, the primary interest it serves is the attraction of attention to my material and thrusting me into the public consciousness. Even if the association is largely negative, it’s better to be thought of negatively than not at all because perceptions can be changed. The longer I remain outside the grasp of law enforcement the more attention I and my material will receive in the event the email is misinterpreted.
In anticipation of this foreseeable consequence I did some subtle diversion if I am pursued and decided to make myself unavailable for a few weeks. I used my debit car in DFW before I left. Then I used cash through Las Cruces. My plan was to go to Gila National Forest because they have free campsites in secluded areas. Instead of going directly to Gila National Forest I went to Walmart in Benson, AZ and used my debit card. I also used my debit card at a vape shop in Benson. This isn’t the Walmart described in the previous journal entry, that was in Las Cruces. Also sent a few messages on POF in Tucson, AZ as I was near enough in Benson to get search results in Tucson. In one message I stated I was going to stop in Tucson on my way to San Diego. Even if somehow these messages are tracked, or if a person I sent the message to recognizes me through some law enforcement effort to find me I doubt anyone will believe I went to San Diego. The point is I put myself in DFW, Benson, and Tucson which should concentrate law enforcement efforts west of where I’m at, if there is any interest in me because of the emails.
In the previous entry I stated I would only send one email but if that email doesn’t reach anyone for whatever reason I thought 5 was a number where the repercussions would be manageable and it also creates 5 opportunities for the material to be read, and additional opportunities for the email to be misinterpreted and generate attention for my material.
If it is a matter of trying to follow me from my last known whereabouts it is Benson, AZ. Their best lead would be the vape shop but she doesn’t know anything, and Walmart isn’t going to reveal anything either. They may think I was going to kill myself because I did buy rope and a bucket. The rope was to mark a trail if I went on a hike off designated trails. The bucket was purchased to exercise because I wasn’t about to spend $60 for 1 35lb weight. Instead I’ll spend 3 dollars on the bucket and fill it with rocks.
They may check the border patrol checkpoint presuming I came from New Mexico to Benson which I did. That doesn’t do much good but give them a picture and be able to state definitively that I came from there. With the description I provided on my webpage, in my last journal entry they may be able to figure out that I was in Las Cruces. They may also presume that since I used cash in Las Cruces that I was returning to that area and going to Benson was diversionary. Of course I’m not going to that area. This theory could be reinforced depending on the observations of a law enforcement officer who was on the median on I10. He was present on the 10 when I was traveling west bound and then about an hour or so later he was present when I was going back east bound. The question is, did he see me going westbound and eastbound, or only westbound, and what does he remember? Either way it doesn’t really provide any clues concerning my present location. It can only reinforce theories one way or the other.
Next we go to cell towers. When I left the Walmart I took the 10 to 191. I think it was 191. I traveled north on 191 to 78 east. I went through Apache National Forest and stopped at the Black Jack Campsite. There was a couple camping there and I saw two cars pull in and one truck left in the morning. The couple also left in the morning. I had no cell service there and when I turn my phone on the weather still says Benson, AZ, which I presume is the area where I last had cell service.
Since the couple left in the morning, they saw me and we exchanged words, so I decided to leave that camp site. I passed the Coal Campsite and considered stopping there but didn’t want to turn around. From 78 I took 180 north. I stopped at a picnic area that had a map of Gila National Forest. I still didn’t have cell service. The map showed there was a camp site just north of the Ranger Station on 180, and then there were a series of campsites along 159. Also on 159 it showed a ranger station that said it was occupied seasonally. I presume this is not the season it is occupied.
I drove past the campsite on 180, it was right outside of a town and visible from 180. Not an ideal location to not be seen. I proceeded to 159. I have driven all over the place, including some pretty remote locations in northern California between the 5 and the 101. I’ve never driven on a road as precarious as 159. It is winding, no guard rails, and becomes increasingly narrower as you proceed up it. I was hoping I didn’t see another vehicle coming in the opposite direction because there are points where it seems like there isn’t enough room, where an error results in your car literally falling off of a cliff. On one spot there is a mirror so you can see if there is a car coming from the other side of this narrow road that turns about 90 degrees. There was also rain and hail when I was driving up it which probably made it appear more dangerous than it actually is.
It was initially discouraging because I saw two campsites but they were visible from the road and had very steep declines to reach. I didn’t know if I’d be able to drive out of them, especially if the rain continued. Eventually I found this turn off that looked like it led to campsites. I pulled into it and parked. Then I walked up the road and there were campsites. I’m probably about ¼ mile from the main road and not visible from anywhere. I also never regained cell service.
I was in Benson, AZ, and then I disappeared.
None of this probably matters because even in this nerf style exaggerated danger climate we live in, I doubt they’ll become concerned enough because of a non-threatening email to pursue me to this degree, but I do recognize the possibility as an unintended consequence of the email.
My goal in mind for the email was to create just enough concern for my material to be reviewed by people who could understand it, write about it, where I could respond, and recommend and have it reviewed by others.
I’ll probably come down from this mountain two weeks from now and be in the same situation I was in prior to coming up here.
The timing of the emails was poor. I sent them on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, meaning they may not even be opened until Monday.
11/25/2021
After I woke up I gathered firewood. I did 9 sets of push ups. I do medium width, wide width, and close width push ups, which is why I did 9 sets. Should have at least done 12 but I burn out quickly on push ups. After the push ups I went for a hike. During the hike I sat near the edge of the cliff and remembered I had a nintendo emulator on my phone. I resumed playing a game of Final Fantasy. Spent a good part of the day finishing the game. Unfortunately this may be my last day with the nintendo because the screen on my phone cracked. After almost 4 years with this phone I cracked the screen.
This creates something of a dilemma for me when I leave this mountain. One of the first things I’ll need to do when I get off this mountain is get a phone. I may be able to buy a used phone from a private seller. Again, if this email was blown out of proportion and the police want to question me the goal is to postpone that interaction as long as possible since the longer I’m pursued the greater the possibility for exposure. Not my intention, but a foreseeable consequence.
It may be difficult to make it two weeks out here. I don’t know if I’ve brought enough food. I really should have just bought a pot and a bunch of Ramens. I have a bag of apples, 2 and a half loaves of bread, about 34oz of peanut butter,2 jalapenos, about 7oz of beef jerky, 5 meat sticks, 13 10 g protein granola bars, 2 nutty bars, a summer sausage, a box of crackers, 1 protein shake, 8oz of walnuts, 1 slice of pumpkin pie, 6 cans of V 8 8oz juices, half a thing of grapefruit juice, 2 chicken salad sandwich pouches, 1 tuna salad sandwich pouch, and 1 tuna pouch. If I’m going to last 2 weeks I have a few hungry days ahead. Also have about 70 waters so I’m good on water.
I was going to take a shower today when it was warm but I wanted to take a shit first. I did that. At first I was thinking about trying to sit over a rock but then I’m going to piss all over my pants and underwear. Then I thought about doing the same thing with my bucket but presumed I would probably shit all over my bucket. I just found a tree and leaned back. It went well. LOL.
There is a progressive news station I get out here. Yesterday a woman was talking about women she interviewed in prison and said that all their troubles stemmed from not having enough resources. No shit. Good thing you’re a concerned person doing interviews to find out shit we already know.
There was a report today that Biden increased tariffs on Canadian timber because due to Canadian subsidies the American timber industry is not competitive. Naturally, the American Home Builders association who is probably buying most of the timber is unhappy about this move. The problem is if builders have to pay more for timber buyers of structures will have to pay more for structures. If buyers are paying more for structures, those structures that are built for investment purposes will have to charge more for rent. This move will potentially add to the continued increase in the cost of housing.
Theoretically, when that cost becomes too high, wherever wood can be substituted for another material the builder will substitute with lower cost material that provides the same structural integrity. Which will decrease the demand for timber which could have some insignificant ecological benefits but the American timber industry is still going to suffer.
My thinking wouldn’t be to raise the cost of timber by forcing purchasers of timber to pay for American timber. If Canada is able to subsidize their timber to give their timber companies a market advantage in the US, then the US should be able to subsidize their timber to give their companies a market advantage.
The first place we look is in regulation. What regulations increase the production cost of timber, what purpose do these regulations serve, and do these regulations significantly serve the purposes they’re designed to serve? What is regulatory benefit to the public interest and is it substantial enough to justify making American timber uncompetitive? These are the first questions we should be asking is American timber is being replaced in the market by lower cost Canadian alternatives.
2nd, how much of the market is being served by Canadian timber? I don’t have any internet right now so I can’t check, but let’s say it’s 20 billion dollars. This could be very high or very low. I’m just using the number as an example to illustrate the point. Then it makes sense to allocate 20 billion to create a timber subsidy if such a subsidy would allow American timber companies to gain a significant share of what Canadian companies hold in the US market. Again the number is probably no where near what Canadian companies have in the US timber market, and the price 20 billion dollars probably wouldn’t do anything to decrease the cost of US timber, the point is those are the kind of considerations that should be made, as opposed to raising tariffs on imports, effectively raising the price of timber, and consequential the cost to build structures, which includes housing structures. Since we’re looking at the issue, what is the cost benefit outlook in subsidizing the US timber industry to be competitive in Canada or elsewhere? People are not elected based on their ability to problem solve, they’re elected on their ability to attract donations through subordination, and their ability to perform political rhetoric that reinforces the perspectives of the masses.
What is the difference between potentially subsidizing timber and the subsidies that I rail against as using public funds to ensure private profits? The difference is many subsidies are allocated for things that industry is already going to produce, or using public funds to build infrastructure that will be the property of private interests and is profitable without the subsidy. 300 billion dollars during the Obama Administration was spent on energy subsidies, where a lot of that money went to grants for companies to build renewable energy infrastructure or massive tax deductions. The argument is that these subsidies were necessary to incentivize the creation and implementation of those structures, but the problem is that money could have just as easily been used to build infrastructure outright, owned by the public, power sold to private utilities, and the profits reinvested to build more renewable energy infrastructure. 300 billion dollars represents roughly 1/7 the amount required to transition the entire grid to renewable energy including storage and new transmission.
The difference is there are timber companies in the United States who have become uncompetitive either due to excessive regulation or Canadian timber. Every piece of Canadian timber sold in the US is money that goes to Canada, is paid to Canadian workers, spent into the Canadian economy, and reinvested by those who it is spent with. A subsidy that allows a US company to be more competitive against foreign exports is money that is paid to US workers, spent into the economy by US workers, and is reinvested by those who it is spent with. As mentioned, if a 20 billion dollar subsidy would increase the market share of US timber by 20 billion dollars it isn’t 0 sum, because the consumption created by retaining that 20 billion dollars in the US stimulates the economy through circulation. Again 20 billion is a meaningless number. I don’t know what the number is, probably nowhere near that it’s just a large number I threw out there to have something to use to illustrate the points.
The other story I heard was about the housing crisis in Phoenix. They have an 8 week wait time on shelter beds. When we’re talking about housing prices we are talking about an increase based on relativity. If I own a 10 year old apartment complex and the current ceiling on the market for a 2 year old apartment in a similar quality neighborhood is $2000 a month on 2 bedrooms of similar space as my 2 bedrooms, my rent has a price that’s relative to that $2000 ceiling. When a new apartment is built and the rent for a 2 bedroom similar to my own is $2500, my 2 bedrooms can now be rented for more because the ceiling is higher, and the 2br that was the ceiling at $2000 a month, may increase rent because that property now has a value that is relative to the to the new apartments. It’s important to understand, that increasing the amount of units available in an area doesn’t necessarily decrease the cost of housing through typical laws of supply and demand, in housing it often has the opposite effect because new constructions typically increase the ceiling on the housing market, where all properties have a value that is tied to the ceiling.
Many probably think a balance stimulus would be the worst thing for this country considering the inflation caused by this nation and this people’s response to covid. With inflation as high as it is, I paid 2.29 for a bag of cheetos puffs that was $2 a year ago (almost 15% on this item), the idea of providing the bottom 50% with a lump sum may seem laughable. Of course with the Covid stimulus over 90% of the country was given a little bit of money, and many people were paid to not produce anything. When you have an increase in the supply of money without an increase in production you have inflation. Difference with a balance stimulus is you’re providing a lump which will be used to increase production from the bottom up. We’re also not giving 90% of people money, not paying people to stay home, and not providing huge sums of money to corporations who do not need it. The best way to fight inflation is through production and rising incomes creating people capable of purchasing the goods and services that are produced. That’s what a balance stimulus will accomplish, people starting businesses, or positioning themselves for better income which will be used to purchase the goods and services they will be producing.
Instead the focus is on ensuring the profits of pharmaceutical companies and covid related industries because Americans are still too stupid to understand the danger of virus that poses no greater risk to their health than the seasonal flu.
I heard an interview of presumably Anthony Fauci talking about booster shots, saying that it was about the “durability” of the vaccine. I remember he used the word durability essentially stating it wasn’t just about longevity but durability. Completely ridiculous. How many of these shots can we sell? If 150 million Americans have 1 or 2, we can sell them on a third even if we can’t reach the other 100 million. There was another story I heard about testing kits. Where the manufacturer of the testing kits was saying they were confident that the at home tests were as effective as tests performed by professionals so long as the user followed the instructions.
Covid is responsible for nothing other than the deaths of those with compromised immune systems due to a severely advanced medical condition or those extremely advanced in age. The rest is the response to it.
11/28/2021
The last few days I smoked some weed and drank and recorded videos. Maybe with some effort I could be as articulate as I am writing. I can be better, these videos are casual good spirited rambling containing a few points. They may have some entertainment value, some educational value, but every hesitation, every word misspoken, every point delivered poorly lingers in my mind. I watched the first one back this evening and most of it is alright. The problem is, are people able to understand that I am that, but I’m also the person in my material? IDK.
There’s this large tanker-like trailer and an area where there are two large basins. I looked in the area when I first arrived. One basin was empty and the other had stagnant water in it. Today a truck with a trailer pulled into the area and did something. We didn’t interact. Shortly after he left a herd of cattle walked through the woods over to that area. I was alarmed at first because all I saw was these large animals through the trees. Thought it might have been bears, and then I was able to make out that it was cattle. Then I saw they had tags on their ears. At first I thought they were wild cattle. Thought I might get charged. Unfortunately my phone was filled with the videos. I took a picture, then deleted the picture, and then my camera wouldn’t allow me to take another picture. I deleted a few more pictures but it still wouldn’t let me take the picture.
I didn’t do much today. First day I didn’t go for a hike. May have had a slight hangover. I listened to the video I created the night before. Then I gathered firewood. After gathering firewood I did a bicep workout. Played Shingen the Ruler most of the day. I started to put together my meal plan for the next 8 days but was interrupted by the man in the truck.
I still have space on my laptop. Maybe I should try to rerecord some of my outlines. I wanted to take the videos from my phone and back them up on my laptop to save space. I tried to cut and paste them but they didn’t copy.
I don’t have much more to say right now.
