bryan dillon spiel

christmas runs a fever

i am under the fringed green shade of palmtrees here in the valley of smokes. it is 70 something and clear as the last remnants of Santa's generosity are crumpled and swept up from under the brittle noble fir trees that have dehydrated from breathing so much conditioned air. Christmas is wrapped up in styrafoam and paper to be gingerly laid in plain brown boxes and labled with strips of masking tape and marker for its long sleep in the attics and crawlspaces under the terracotta tiles and chip shingles that peak and wave in the oceans of residences that make up this basin suburbia. Christmas always seems a little out of place hung up in the olive and orange trees. Strung out like some giltter junkie fading in the sun. Date palms and Silver Eucalyptus twinkle with thick wrapped white lights but it seems more like a trendy restaurant motif that an attempt at christmas. It is still festive and it is what i grew up with but when you tear open that red envelope from aunt myrna there is a snow frosted pine and a night snuggled house in a lost american dream of what holidays look like. there are no snow men here. styrofoam men and lit from the inside plastic men but there is no magic in their old top hats and they never just melt away, they must be unplugged and toted round back to the garage where they stare down from the rafters every day as you pull in from a long day of doing what you do. In july as you pack up to go see the fireworks at the beach you see the plastic coal eyes and perfect carrot nose up in the dark beams just waiting for those 26 days when it is everybody's friend, welcoming all your guests to the next wedge of pecan pie and glass of spiced napa valley wine. Christmas is just different on this little planet of LA. When it is all that you know you still know that it is different because it is not marketed the way it is lived. Maybe there are only select places in america where snowflakes pillow up on window sills and cardinals perch on holly branches and thin blonde children sketch out 8 and 0 on slate frosted ponds. Perhaps it is just a small amount but that is what is given to us to see and savor, to expect and desire. I am glad the anticipation of the season is over. I am glad the reminders of i live i do not live nor have i wanted to are not being slammed up into my eyeballs every 30 seconds. The new year can slip in under the door and people can concentrate on keeping there resolutions and keeping warm (or cool if you live here) and get back to the everyday of just being decent people.

now i just have to live through another fucking valentines day as the ever single me and the rest of my year will be fine.

I also need to scope some job action since i just stepped into town. It is a whole new life in the same old way and there will be more from this new locale in the weeks to come.

merry, happy and joyous bl

tue, 29 dec 1998

January languishes in the balmy grip of winter like a swooning debutante in the arms of some latin waiter, its new long throat laid back and exposed for all the parasites and vampires of the popular press to draw blood, conclusions and attention to the events and ideas of last year and even the last century in a frenzy of nostalgia and predictions. there are two full moons in this month, one that just passed and one on the last days of this years first 31 days. no real direction to that point just something i noticed.

I have spent the last few days looking for gainful employment but all these newly ousted politicos are getting in my way. No one can spange a quarter like freshly deposed pete wilson. he is honing in on my corner in front of the 7-11 and it is bringing down my average. my tattered suits are just not as nice as his. I would go to the Supermarket down the street but Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole are working both sides of that corner. so it is off to the world of employment for me. and since that is boring i will tell you about what i did the other day.

Christmas is special to many people and in some cemeteries it is special even to the dead.

On Cherry blvd there is a large mourtuary and grounds behind a food 4 less super shop. i was walking along when i noticed that when i peered through the gates there seemed to be a fully decorated christmas tree far off on the lawn. then i saw another one. and another and another and another. there were probably 300 or more fully decorated (some flocked) full sized trees and dozens more little ones at the flat grave plates that checkered the yellowed grass.

I had to go back to food 4 less and get a quick snap disposable camera.

entering the cemetery there is a strange sense of awe and concern. it is very much like some half forgotten christmas village with no buildings saying "Reindeer stables" and "toy shop" just marble white statues of the virgin mary and Jesus here and there floating on a dias of low juniper bushes. there were trees wrapped round with glittery mettallic garlands in blue or red or purple. there were lots of plain glass ornaments and strange aluminium colored cones that were tied point inward while all the open mouths clumped together to form a sphere. several of the sites had nativity scenes laid out on the bronze ground plates and some had photo inlays of the decesed (ususally in the teen to twenties) with the kneeling figures gathered around to gaze adoringly at both the baby jesus and the long lost smiling face. there are no head stones in the traditional sense so there is an even errier barrenness to the grounds with just the trees and markers to where people are located. some have small white plastic fencing with red ribbons and shiny ornaments hung between posts. many have open musical cards playing a constant vigil of silent night and jingle bells all slightly out of sync all at various weariness from the running down of the battery. there were a few "Santa stops here" signs posted at the corner of the graves and several trees had small stuffed animals and flowers and wrapped boxes under them. One pair of graves not only had its own christmas tree and fence and ornaments and musical card but it had a tree shading them and the tree was wrapped like a candycane in red ribbon and hung from a branch over the graves were two stockings. the most impressve one was the grave of raymond ortiz (the name is changed but not by much) with its own 3 foot high full replica of the mission of the virgin of guadalupe with plastic stain glass windows that glowed golden as the setting sun passed through them and inside beyond the open doors were mary and joseph and the baby jesus and santa holding a silent prayer in the pine sented shadows. there were two full blown burials taking place in the afternoon and at one of them there was a family decorating a tree beside the freshly turned soil waiting for the casket to be lowered. It was one of the trippiest events i have ever obsevered. interesting and odd. if i had any more money i probably would have sprained my finger taking pictures with little throw away cameras. each location was a work of devotional and seasonal art.

when the pictures were developed and i had them at my parents house i showed my mother the lavish spectacle and she said./

"so what were you doing in the cemetary"

i replied that i was there to photograph the trees

"but why were you in the cemetery" as though there must have been some othere reason why i was there and then i just happend to notice all of the christmas trees and said "well i should get a few shots of this too;"

So i told her i just had to have some photos of the trees because it was so trippy.

retort: "yes, well they do that every year, but why were you in the cemetery"

It was at this point that i realized it is rude to backhand your mother so i refrained from knocking some sense into her even though she is where i learned that technique from and left,

it is also rude to call your mother a stupid bitch but there are certain levels of frustration that just bring out the least desirable quailities in all of us.

Often (usually when i am in california) i wonder if this is the same woman who encouraged her children to draw and read and fabricate stories. did she teach us to be creative and inquisitve or could she just not think of anything else so she went with artistic because it was cheap and simple. some paper and crayons, an old tape recorder and some worn tapes, clay and macaroni, glue and glitter with the occasional great, how nice and good thrown in randomly to keep the kids out of your hair. maybe the analytical deviant sub-geniuses we have evolved into were some unforseen side affect. Sometimes i wonder what kind of adult she expected to metamorphosize from the child she tried raising. Often i do not care but am certain this one is not the one she envisioned. maybe there was no vision, maybe it was just a dream.

Every day i realize with pericing clarity why i moved to oregon and it leaves me with a headache right behind my eyes that is tight and low like a tripwire waiting for a thought to stumble upon it so it can flare up with a sharp tugging pain emblazoned with "what the fuck is your damage."

i do not know

but enough about that the next day i went to the bonaventure with my sister to have cocktails in the lounge on the top floor. it revolves and you know margaritas taste better when the landscape is crusing by. we had the vegtable plate and drinks served in blue ceramic shaped like california. it is a drink, it is a souviner. the sun was setting and burned up all the glass towers around us with red and orange reflections of clouds and smog. it was relaxing and we were the only people in the lounge. i told my sister some of my story concepts. she drew some pictures. we hung out. when we were taking the blue line home it was crowded with off work commuter traffic and about half way the train stops under a freeway at the Rosa Parks station. so i said "lets get off here and have our picture taken with rosa" she said "sure, i have too much money on me anyway" so i said "getting mugged can be fun, it is an ancedote to tell your friends." she said. "yeah, 'my friends got mugged at rosa parks station and all i got was this lousy tee-shirt' I said "it would be better if it was "I was mugged by rosa parks and all i got was this lousy tee-shirt"

we laughed so hard we almost stopped breathing. small things amuse us on long train rides out of la.

later we decided that "visit long beach: experience the peril" would be a great new tourism slogan.

everyone wants a thrill, a little danger, we could train muggers to be very polite but firm and mug tourists and then give them a "my parents were mugged in Long Beach and all i got was this lousy tee-shirt" tee-shirt as they ran away. tourism may go down but earnings would go up so we could make it all up in volume.

well it is just an idea. the beach is for shit.

i am near the beach and over the bluff between the palm trees i can see the ocean and the coming of evening.

the sun sets like a falling woman tripped over the hill of san pedro she flails backwards into long beach harbor toothed with dozens of grid laced cranes. when the sun is in her belly her hair tresses up like yellow licks of fire over her face - her dress flutters and flushes red her arms cling to the sky in freeze frame and in that moment she remains as the sun passes through her. it decends to the point of contact - a crimson bed of embers above the ocean the clouds of her pale and ash like robes left out to dry and the traces of her decent flume and feather against the high pushing wind. As the amber and rose drain from the cloud sillhouette she blurs like the fan inside of a shell. the flat faux cement aparment towers banded in aqua balconies that cover the oil derricks on the oil islands in the harbor light up with red and yellow christmas bulbs and the pylons and curved walls that reign in and reside beside thickets of royal palms so slender and supreme also twinkle with their garlands of glimmer. Night comes and this means i have been typing too long so i must go now to save my pocket money.

i take my fingers from the keyboard and cross them for the hopes of a new job from the resumes distributed and to be delivered.

Balmy love from the tropic shores of califorina where winter is 72 and clear near the sea.

B

tue, 05 jan 1999

observations on the financial war against the homeless

money is only a concept. you can not eat it or warm yourself with it or find shelter under it. It can be used to achieve these ends but the actual factual paper and metal that burns holes in our pockets and holds a talismanic place in our hearts exists truly in our collective dream world, and corporate america is trying to force itself on our dreams. i noticed this in an incident back in 1994 but it seemed so inconsequential then i just thought it was a fluke, little did i know that it was a harbinger of things to come. we are not consumers, we are cash cows to be milked more and more effectively as the years progress.

for 2 years in the early 1990's i paid for everything in silver dollars. while commented on by some it was always accepted with the slightest grumbling of "where do i put this" or "cool, i am buying these out of the register" it was major change. a small statement about the futility of paper ones when everything runs up to a dollar or more. harkening back to the days oldsters lament about when you could buy a big mac for two quarters. well if you use silver dollars it is almost the same just two big coins and your back in the golden days of sliver money providing what you need and paper money reserved for the big ticket items. I only encountered one problem (outside of trying to explain my point which no one understood) and that was at the glamour that is dennys. The dennys in question is still there and in a very downtown location so there is a large homeless population that will avail themselves of its late night comforts when the weather turns or if they have had a good day spanging and are craving a grand slam breakfast. Most people do not like to smell week old sweat, decaying cotton and matted hair when having a cup of coffee to wake up not from the caffinee but from the fear of haveing drunk dennys coffee, there is only so much discomfort one expects at denny's and the additonal ambiance probably raised many complaints. Now the company does have the right to refuse service (sort of) but as we have seen from other parts of society if you say that someone cannot come into a dennys you better have a damn good reason or you will need a damn good lawyer. So to discourage the vagrant population from besiging them and driving away the full dinner family revenue they instituted a policy that you could not pay with change. I only found out about this because after i finished my country fried death wish and whipped potato powder (with apple pie for the all american dessert) i was told that i could not pay with "change". Silver dollars i countered hardly constituted change in the derogatory terms they implied. You do not sit in front of the 24 hour mart and wimper all day to recive a hearty boon of silver dollars, you get copper and the occasional dime because it feels small. They made one more attemt to stand firm on their policy which i countered with explaining this was the only cash i had and it was either accept it or not recive payment. they caved because any capitalist stooge worth their salt will buckle on company policy if it means getting paid "this one time" opposed to going empty handed but on the high moral ground (questionable as that may be since the government sees coins as leagal tender) so i just stopped eating at that dennys; other dennys did take the silver dollars. after that i went through a phase of paying for everything with 2 dollar bills so i slipped out of the change loop much like the rest of america.

Yesterday i went to the mega vons in bixby knolls to buy a couple of bottles of seven-up. I had a pocket full of change and my walking shoes on so i went over to score me some bubbly beverages. Since this was after 8 pm there was no one at the piano in the floral department playing those welcoming melodies that make this more than a store, it is an event. I walked to the far back beverage section and grabed the green plastic bullet containers and went to the 9 items or less, cash only line because i was a two item, cash only guy. After the checker rung up my purchase (total of $2.41) i handed her my change (total of $2.60). While it was perhaps the weight of a dead mouse it was not one though you could not have told from the expression on her face. She informed me that the store policy was not to accept payment in change unless it was rolled. Now there were not enough of any of these coins to constitue a roll, there were ten dimes fifteen pennies, two quarters and 18 nickels. Not a huge amount of change. she told me that there was a change counting machine by the door that would issue a voucher and then i could pay with that. so i went to the machine of green block plastic and touch screen technology. there is a tray you dump your change on and then the screen asks you to make certan you have removed all papers, gum, dirt and debris (with the unwritten "you homless motherfuckers" tagged at the end.) then you touch the screen to start and it informs you that for the "service" they will take 8.9 percent off every dollar you have changed. (when you have your check cashed at one of those low rent moneyorder/check cashing dives they only take 2.3 percent for every hundred) so i slammed the ok button and waited for the whirring and clinking to stop. I recived a laser printed receipt for $2.38 which was short of the $2.41 needed for the sodas so i stalked back and said "the machine you sent me too took some of the money i was going to pay you with" so she accepeted the voucher (which rings up as a non-cash payment) and rang it in at its full value before the "service" deduction. I do not remember if i said thank you when i left, i should have but i was not in a talking mood. i was in a screaming mood. who the hell are they to decide what is legal tender. it was not like i was paying them in bottles or cans or postage stamps which all have a government regulated value. I was paying in money minted and distributed by the american government for payment of goods and services within its borders. when did corporate america decide that they could decide what kind of american money they would choose to accept, what if they decide that money is out all together and will only accept debit cards and credit cards? I do not know why they have the policy about change because i was too furious to discuss anything with a manager but i know that what ever reason they may concoct the bottom line is that it is a policy to discourage homeless people from using their services because who else pays in change besides desparate college students and the occasional kid with a low allowance. I hear there is going to be a new silver dollar soon with the face of sacagawea. We all know what happened to the susan b. anthony and while trolley cars in san francisco may be using them few others are. In this coin hostile evironment how many years will it be before the sacagawea coin is some feduciary white elephant. this is all double-plus ungood.

maybe larry flynt was on to something when he paid his court fine in pennies.

money is just the new religon with its pantheon of deities in paper and metal, who is vons or dennys or anyone to tell me which gods i can choose to whoreship with?

this is probably very disjointed but i am trying to write this with a ramones record playing and someone following on live bass in the living room also perky 6 year old running and chatting around. Jennifer and the baby are mercifully quiet. this is not my house so i just type and hope i am not to lost in my own words. Also i have a sinus headache from the dust of many sofas. one resides where one can.

that is my rant for the day. many other things happpend in the job hunting world and such but i am just not going any further today.

Pay for everything in change.

sat, 09 jan 1999

sadly i am silent because i have no real access to the internet anymore with out paying for a public stall or imposing on the kindness of busy friends so while i have said little lately i am thinking and thinking of you all.

this is nothing but a kind word

and a kind word in return would be gladly found when i am again able to read my mail in what ever future day that might be.

Whether or not i miss you is irrelevant if you do not believe me

but i do.

Q

sat, 13 feb 1999

so the days have turned to bite and claw with chilled long winds and the days are lengthening so the night sulks in the corners of the sky. it is mid to almost naught of february and i have a little to share with you in the poem tree department as the passing day of hearts and tinfoil has stirred but not shaken me a bit.

these are sometimes obscure but to me it is not about the message it is the words. i will divulge a bit of info on the surroundings that prompted each.

there are no names to the poems and my punctuation and spelling are suspect as usual.

the first one i wrote while eating chicken vegetable soup at park pantry on Junipero and broadway the night before Valentines day only on the observation of a busboy snickering at some scandalous joke told out of my earshot. all that inspired me was the blush of his face.


There are shades of gold and peach that linger
Along curled undersides of sunlicked clouds
When cool evening draws its darkened finger
Over daytides drowsy goose creased brow.

The same gilt rose blooms in every candle
Aglow when passioned hearts inflamed compel
Or garland blush on frill lipped mantle
Of new born Aphrodite's wave washed shell

And tinted in tremble ringed goblet wine
To form a lax and flaxen garnet glint
Roman beaten brass and grapes combine
like sun's first kiss upon the firmament.

Still this color give my pulse pause complete
Only lighting against your greeting cheek.


and in thinking of that one i followed my thoughts as they wandered to Persephone and sadness


Clean split pomegranate left untasted
Keeps crimson ghosts inside a shun turned ear
They whisper of past chance now wasted
Till craves the tongue a second gift appear

With phoenix wing the tempt do twice arise
Denial mute against the call of blood
just six would be no crime, no prize
but tasted glee and fear the mind occlude

With each pip burst like damming rain
To flood the tongues unnourished field
Sugared drops brace down weak heart like chains
Bringing even a zenithed sun to yield

Untasted fruit remains quite fresh and sweet
Once bitten brings bitter joy complete


and from this i moved on to the sorrow of an alcoholic relationship which i have not been involved in since i was 20.


Fresh hungry like a new born boar agape
your lips seek not the mouth of mine for tasting
But a vial pressed with sainted grapes
Time falls spent like coins on wine and wasting

It turns stiff hands against its countenance
and pulls its blindfold from my skin
etching dry the lines of lost romance
As i await your attentions to begin

No flesh of glass, no bone of cork, my blood
is not your liquored souls desired port
No vintner grew these hands from ash and mud
who wring out stains, bring hot bread and comfort.

I would spill my woe if you would see my grief
without being distilled for your apratief


and with the last one forgive my inability to use french correctly but after dinner drink just did not rhyme.

so this is what i have been writing lately and maybe in march when the candy colored paper and crinkly tinfoil fade away i might have less inclination to ramble so.

i am also working on my other projects but they are not in any stage to be shared so all you get is the poems.

i send electrons of affection to you all.

Q

thu, 18 feb 1999

April Showers

Easter has come and gone again in a flurry of painted eggs, half shank hams, chocolate bunnies, fancy prayers and other up to the minute tensions of fun. i have found a new goal to occupy my rain sprinkled hours not already devoted to the ever relentless job hunt.(which i shall not talk much about being dozens of resumes and 6 interviews into still not having a job, arg.)

the great joy of my life now is developing the summer tour of Jug or Not and the All-American Teenage Revue. What do i know about setting up and executing a 10 city music/performance art tour in the Pacific States? Nothing. that is why it is so exciting and fun right now. Now is the great champagne explosion of reckless niavitee and relentless optimisim (and poor spelling) The high energy excitement of planning and questions and challenges is just shooting right through me. my head is like a fantastic helieum balloon full up to bursting fat and floating in the high summer sun getting warm and happy bouncing along a gleeful breeze.

Ofcourse there will be difficulties. Key point, i have no idea what is really required. but i anticipate looking into it. it will be fact finding fun. but difficulties are just a future challenge right now i am still working with the band to create a presentation to promote the show. when we have something solid to pitch then we fire away and see what happens.

Conceptually it is a 12 person jug band that splinters into several smaller "presented" bands at various points in the concert. We are hoping to show live pictures on the band website during each concert from the drummers point of view (the drum cam) this puts the audience on the internet. Also daily tour diary updates to keep the page fresh and Zine/programs at each concert created as a unique issue for that specific show with information, puzzles, band charater interviews and photos. it is to promote good summer hand-clappin, foot-stompin' fun and give the band members a chance to mosey up the coast.

if anyone has any helpful advice or ideas that would be great, if you have any good information that would be greater potaters.

if your helpful nature runs more towards the "you have no idea what you are doing so just quit" please keep that to yourself

if i want my balloon pricked, blown out, all squashed flat before reality does its own work i will just speak to my family about my ideas. thier venomous reproaches are far superior to any paltry dismissals any unrelated person has ever given.

right now i am happy and gleeful and thundering with ideas. i feel very alive and glad.

it is great after all those weeks of feeling down from the rejection of non-jobbines.

i may still have no job (soon to change) but i have a goal and that is great.

big fabulous exhuberent love from the land of pie dreams and cloud kings.

Quicken

tue, 06 apr 1999

My indentured servitude

My masta dun gon an hired me out to the local Landed Gentry over ats Green Tree Mortgage. I be spendin my days pickin loan application files in the hot sun and photocopyin and filin them as pretty as you please. masta say if i do reel good i mights be sold to them then i cans live my days in second mortgage paradise. oh lordy i do hopes they learns to likes me.

So after weeks of silence one of my several employment agents turns up a bit of clickity clack along the Grand Prix Race way just in time to get an eyeful on Friday. It is mostly trained monkey work with alphabacatin and photomocopyin with the occasional foray into the special Mortgage application software so i can print more things to file and copy.

it is a casual environment of nice jeans and buttoned shirts with matching running shoes. half the office speaks spanish so it has an international flair. or maybe a california prison flair. i have not much experience with either so who is to say.

there is an opening for a receptionist so if all goes well and i make a decent impression i may just have my employment contract purchased and be sold over to this mortgage company.

such is the life of the indentured servants in this ever more feudal world where people live in the vista mesa housing communities in thier overpriced beige cardboard houses on lanes with names that no longer have meaing like charrdonay and cherokee, glen garden and morning star. I am amused that while they live in fear that someone may get lost in the rotoscope vision of these fresh crackhouses of the future they are comforted in knowing that they can call from their cell phone and ask "did you say turn on Lakegate or Lakevista?" and they can cluck and fuss and say "no i said pass Lakeway and turn on Le'Temps Chandey" Which is poorly pronounced and never understood. It is just pretty. Well hoping to be.

sadly these are the conversations overheard and therefore i listen little when working becase my interest in other peoples golf anccedotes and car purchaces is slim.

even slimmer than audry hepburn.

but i get paid and that is good.

big love and more later.

Q

wed, 14 apr 1999

the wide black beltstraps of the city shimmer as the sun cooks up the asphalt taking fashion from the matte of winter to the gloss of summer. how chic these roadways that lash down this city by the sea like some enormous net to keep it from sliding into the pacific. the city presses like butterfat and fingers between the crosses stretching itself to freedom but where would it go if the roads were repealed and the plaster and lathboard, the steel and glasstic were free to roam? perhaps it would slip into the sea, so cooling and calm on this hot and bright day. i am not frolicing under the waves, short as they are on this strangled shore of harbors and breakwaters.

i am clickety clacking out some electronica to break the silence of two drab months. not that things are less drab but there is only so long that i can hold my thoughts within my brainium o crainium before it burstacates. how like the city are my thoughts straing for relese that they do not know what to do with.

my thoughts are rarely distracted by work these days but a week ago i fininshed a fortnight of hauling x-ray files from antisepcit hospital halls to dusty garage storage rooms so i am change jangly now and have a cash trickle. need long time job for cash flow. Perhaps a better one as well. this was industrial filing with all the lugging and shoving of warehouse work combined with the meticulous mentalations of long string numerical filing. all for 7.50 an hour.

there were 9 of us, 6 homiecanos (chicanos who act black) 2 teen philipinos and the token honkey, me. i was also the oldy oldster being at least 8 years older than any of them. thier contemporary nature had them craving the music of the day and someone dragged in a battered combo box with no antenna. this limited radio choices to KLOS, Power 106, the wave, and some mexicana station. Some afternoons we would listen to the mexicana station but every morning it was Blazin' hip hop and r&b with Big Boyeeee with the special treat of big boyeeees neighborhood on tuesday and thursday. sometimes it was funny. sometimes it was not. afternoons on power were with nadia de la cruz. they claim not to repeat the same songs as other staions do and i suppose that is true since i do not belive the songs they play are on other stations however i heard "where my girls at" every day twice a day and "thuggin'" and something about there being a heaven for a g, which amused me because all i could see were ammana frost frees stacked with 40's and long nailed 18 yearolds in silver hotpants and wonderbras attending to the needs of gold ringed boys in fur coats. i am also curious how anyone can believe they can break any if not most of the ten commandments and still get into heaven. oh well. everybody has to have hope. besides the lyrics to allmost alll the songs proved that language has evolved further than i thought. i have met some people that think the evolution of language is not a good thing. i am of two minds but i know it is inevitable since we do not speak like the english and the english do not speak like their Tudor ancestors. I would have never thought to rhyme zone with on but it can be done through specialized enunciation and vowel empahaisis. sometimes i wish i had a radio. but i grew up without music and i live just fine without. back to my weeks with the homiecanos. the one grating thing was that every day one of them (mostly a thick one with a wispy gotee and sleepy eyes) would make some degrogatory comment about fags. mostly it was the occasional "i heard that guy was a fag" or "ther were some fags at the market" followed by the prefuntory "stupid fags" or "i hate those damn fags" but there were two disturbing ramblings that just happened on two separate days during lunch and i just feel like sharing them with you. i will not preface with who said what suffice that each break is a new speaker.

"that truck is bad ass dude"

"you could get a lot of bitches with wheels like that"

"it would get pretty crowded"

"two could sit on my lap, shit"

"you know what i'd do homes"

"what"

"id go pick me up some fags and take them back to my place and fuck thier shit up"

"with a bat"

"no homes with a pipe"

at this point i decided to interced by bringing their minds back to bitches, mentioning if you had the truck bed upholstered you could just pick them up, do them and toss them by the side of the road. I understand that is a vile and sexist comment but they are simple people and i wanted to divert them quickly without bringing violence down upon myself. would that have happened if i had defended homosexuals? i would like to believe no, but i was uncertain.

the other comment made a few days latter that grew from the odd daily sentiment "i hate those fags"

"why do those fags get married and have kids? I got an uncle an he is a big fag. he wears his shirt up here like this. (holds shirt bunched in front above navel) like some fucking faggot, man. I don't see why they just don't cut it off (downward swoop of the hand) and say 'I like it is the ass'".

being the only whitey is one thing. being the only 'mo is another ('mo is my new favorite term for Homo.)I do not know if they thought i was, i did not tell them. if i was a woman i would have some leagal recourse for the thousands of times they refered to bitches or hos (i do not think they said woman once, all are unmarried obviously) ofcourse if i was a woman they would have known that and probably not spoken the same way.

i was glad to have a job for a few days and get a little money. i am more glad not to have that job any more.

but enough of that. another observation in the everchaning linguistics of california. the big phrase i overheard the other day is"i am all about.... Such as "i am all about yoga" or "i am all about 200 carbs a day" Or "i am all about bijork" it replaces "i like" "I have" or "I do" so handy. its wicked cool (a bostonian holdover)

overheard conversation

Speaker One "When i am having mexican i am all about margaritas but when it is a special ocassion i am all about mai tai's, they get me so mellow."

Speaker Two "I gotta hook up with some mai tai"

end of the observation. blonde women can be so amusing, i think they are either in college or in the industry. i was in santa monica having coffee and they were walking past the patio.

it seems everyone has a little black backpack these days.

now i am just thinking about which summer blockbuster to see, (few seem interesting and star wars was the biggest dissapointment so i will not get on that train.)

but summer is here and the time is right for dancing in the streets so get up get out and get your groove on my lovely ones

Big wilted love from the hot sea side at long beach.

Q

wed, 30 jun 1999