Not Going Anywhere 'Easy'

Tags: contrarian, easy, homelessness, atrophy, muscles, nisus, snurt, tarassis, lapidable, lant, keech, impinguinate, infandous, cococallia

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.---Bejamin Disraeli

    Three to five hours of humping beer and soda cases every day is no longer enough exercise for me. This last week I've found myself yearning for more, so I started lifting light weights at 'home'. While I'm watching Fox News in 'my' broken barcolounger, I pump a 10 pound hand weight across my chest . . . two hours every night. I'm feeling the burn.
    My feet are getting better, too. Ten years of working / slacking on my ass had decimated my foot muscles from atrophy, apparently. My foot pain used to stay with me for three or four hours after I'd gotten off my feet. Now it's gone in half an hour.
    My health got really bad during my homelessness in the car. Sometimes I'd lay in that car for days and days without ever getting out (in matters of toiletry, I can only say that if nothing goes in, nothing comes out).
    I probably should have died many times in the nineties. Medically, I definitely should be dead, but I'm a hardheaded, stubborn contrarian. I'll be damned if I'm gonna go anywhere easy.

Moving Along Slowly Through A Drizzle-Gray Sunday

Tags: Candyland, Creepy, Jackson Square, rap, Arco, SSI, gas station, Johnny Cash, The Wino Buzz, Sees The Stars, woodpusher, xanthodont, sacofricosis, saprostomus, odorivector
I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me.---Sir Walter Raleigh
    Creepy cooked a pancake breakfast for me this morning then skipped off to Candyland (the 99 Cent Store). One of our Motel Marquis inmates was filling the motel courtyard with the bittersweet sound of his lone coronet playing, giving the courtyard a bluesy, Jackson Square feel until motel manager Don put an end to that shit.
    "You let them play the blues, next thing ya know, they'll be wantin' ta crank up that damned Rap on their boomboxes," Don explained when I protested. "I checked to see when his rent is due. Think I'll just tell him to move along when he tries ta pay it."
    We're all paying a price for Rap music, I think.
    With nothing else to do this gray, drizzly Sunday morning, I walked over to the Arco for coffee and cigarettes. I sat on an ash can in front of the store sipping my coffee and smoking my cigarettes, vacantly staring at the gas customers doing their zombie consumer pump to cashier to pump shuffles.
    I had a Johnny Cash song doing a reverb in my skull when Kenny, the Canadian wino on SSI who drinks beer all day behind the Arco dumpster, mistook the vacancy in my eyes for The Wino Buzz and came over to share the Sunday morning reverie he assumed I was having. He talked. I watched the gas zombies.
    Kenny, now an alcohol-emaciated, petite little scruffy 90 pounder, had killed a black bear once. Brown bears're too dangerous. Some stand nine feet tall. The Indians tanned his black bear skin with their teeth. He knew some Indians like me, he said. He'd run in to a few 'Sees The Stars' before, but never met any 'Iron Weeds'.
    "I seen you fillin' them propane tanks," Kenny told me. "I used ta do that when I wuza Arco manager in Ohiee. Strangest propane tank I ever filled was one a them big hot air balloons. I seen the guy coming down outta the sky in one one day. He jus landed that thing in the Arco driveway, hopped out and asked fer propane like he's a regular camper 'r sumpthin. Weirdest thing I ever saw."
    Kenny's face had lit up with that memory. He seemed lost in the memory a moment, reliving the glory days of gas station cashierery, then a shadow ran across his face behind his eyes and he was back at the Crenshaw Arco, a little man in charge of nothing, barely tolerated on the sidewalk outside the store, a man told regularly by the police and store proprietors to "move along".

Creating Crimes For Fun And Profit

Tags: entrapment, Arco, Serge, counterpoint, cops, gored ox, jarvis, obstipation, pornocracy, government by liars, government by cheaters, criminalize, felonize, urticate, jobberknowle, jugulate, comprachico

Man's mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.---Oliver Wendell Holmes

    One of my friends wrote about the Arco entrapment (see previous two posts):

    “Hate to disagree with you on this one. I've seen cashiers go as slow as snails. You don't get paid for hustling like if you're on commission.  Two, if he just started he should ask EVERYONE to flash their ID when buying liquor.  I did.  I didn't care if they were blue-hairs walking with the aid of a cane.   Old folks got a chuckle when I asked. 

    Convenience store clerks are easy targets for small-time hoodlums.  Take your time.  One customer at a time.  They can wait; whether it's a coke to drink or a gas to pump.  How's that for point/counterpoint.?”

      To which I replied:

    “Bullshit. This is not catching a person committing a crime so much as the police CREATING a crime. There were no kids getting beer at the Arco. We were checking IDs. They set it up so Serge would have a lapse.

    Let's say a hundred people come to do business with you every day and every two or three weeks one of them is a person the police have intimidated into setting you up. If the mole can set you up for a criminal charge, the police will let him off of something HE did.

    OSHA has many laws about posting notices on certain walls about chemicals. Let's say the police have the mole bring a small bottle of solvent to your workplace. He spills something on your desk on purpose, then offers to clean it up using the solvent. In the heat of the moment, you say okay.  If you do, you are fined your next six weeks income, get fired and now have a permanent criminal record.

    Don't  EVEN tell me you wouldn't be screaming bloody murder if the cops set you up like that.
   

The Janus Of Public Opinion

Tags: Janus, twofaced, reactionary, drivel, Monty, lobcock, pygalgia, wittol, witling, bespew, jarvis
Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fail.---Oliver Goldsmith

    I was talking to my crack motel's assistant manager Monty tonight about the police entrapment at the Arco, you know, spouting my right-wing reactionary drivel about local law enforcement paying people to commit crimes (personally, I'm agin it, we've got enough of that going on at the federal level) and Monty surprised me by saying that when a person gets hired on as a gas jockey (i.e. in a minimum wage job with no benefits; no health, no overtime, no retirement, no sick or holiday pay, no respect or even manners from the general public) that that person has a solemn responsibility to the community . . .

    "Wait, Monty, aren't you the same fella tellin' me two weeks ago that no good ever came from a cop coming on to this property? Wasn't that you tellin' me that?"

    "Well, yeah, James, but that was different. That was HERE."

    "Exactly. Janus (the two-faced god) rides again," I said.

    "I don't know what the new ho's got ta do with the price of rice in China," Monty said.

    "Me neither," I said.

    Sometimes my conversations with Monty leave him unsatisfied.

Doing Their Part To Put More People Out On The Streets

Tags: Arco, gas station, entrapment, alcohol, fine, nazi, fascists, fascism, criminalize, zefrank, kevin smith, kakidrosis, kakopygian, ablutophobic, antithalian, baculum, bdellatomy, bdelloid, cacafuego, cops, fuzz, police, lawman
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of . . . things left unsaid.---Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Shortly after I left Arconia last night (the Arco gas station where I work), a deputy sheriff gave a 20 year-old a marked five dollar bill to go and buy some beer at the Arco. The deputy parked behind the Arco and waited. The 5'11" 20 year-old man waited until it was real busy in the store and set his trap (put the beer on the counter).
    Serge was working the counter alone and was distracted by some idiot woman who was trying to buy gas on her ATM card and was too stupid to know how to swipe her card. Plus, the limousine drivers, who buy gas on a charge system, were yelling for their pumps to be turned on and some kids were yammering "How much is this?" and "Do I have enough if I get two of these and one of those plus . . ."
    I've learned something this month of selling gas at the Arco. There's something about the process of purchasing gasoline that turns normal people into rude, impatient, flaming assholes (I call them gasholes).
    I don't know what it is. It's like these Angelinos think of driving as a God-given right and having to stop to buy gas somehow pisses them off . . . and they blame the gas clerk for their inconvenience. I know it's just a matter of time before I pop one of these gasholes in the nose. I'm waiting on a certain taxicab driver now. Pow! He's gonna get it.
    Anyway, the man got the beer, walked around the corner to the waiting sheriff, and BAM! They got Serge for a $900 ticket for selling beer to a minor.
    Serge makes maybe $600 a month at the Arco. If convicted, he'll be fired and perhaps a nice judge will let him make payments on the $900 ticket out of his unemployment checks.
    Hooray! Hooray! Your tax dollars have put yet another hard-working $6.25 an hour man out on the street! Are you proud?
    My question is this: since the deputy sheriff gave the 20 year-old man the money for the beer, isn't the deputy sheriff guilty of purchasing alcohol for a minor?
    Yes, it's a facetious question. We all know that the job of law enforcement is to criminalize ALL the citizens so that there is a record on everybody. People without criminal records make cops nervous.
    Don't believe me? Try this little experiment. Watch a cop's reaction when he meets a non-criminal in a store or something. He'll barely say hello. But watch what happens when that same cop runs across a felon.
    Alla sudden the cop gets all chattery and smiley, like he's high on ecstasy or something. Cops like felons. They live in the same world.

No Man Is Gas Island

Tags: Night Man Day, Broke Fingers, propane, gas island, pumps, gas station, Arco, boogeyman, intimidation, scam, Creepy, movie extra, turkey, El Camino Community College
Seize the day.---Horace
Seven hours humping beer and soda cases; scrubbing floors, sidewalks and gas pumps; counting cigarettes, filling propane tanks, selling gas, bagging groceries, fronting shelves, smiling at assholes, showing little old ladies how to pump gas, emptying trash, breaking down cardboard boxes, sweeping, filling bags with ice, running the boogeyman beggars off the gas islands and mopping, mopping, mopping.
That's a lot of work on a holiday for $43.50 minus taxes. Better be losing weight.
Got two turkey dinners today: one from Broke Fingers (aka the night man Day, a co-worker named Day who works the graveyard shift) and another one from a customer. I think they appreciate how I have run the most vicious of the panhandlers off the gas islands (where they scare the crap out of the customers using the old Intimidation Bum scam) and they want to keep my strength up.
Turkey on a paper plate gingerly wrapped in aluminum foil: how folksy.
My crack motel roommate Creepy ate at the Sizzler today. He made a special trip over to my workplace to let me know this. Creepy visits the Arco daily to check up on me and brag about some fine meal he’s had on a movie set where he was 'working' as an extra or at the El Camino Community College where he majors in Financial Aid.

Holiday Blues, Jolie Style

Tags: book learning, Creepy, Creepmobile, gas fumes, Jed Clampett, Beverly Hillbillies, Hollywood Park, Century Boulevard, spungers, sputative, igly, imbonity, coprolalia

I am never bored anywhere; being bored is an insult to oneself.---Jules Renard

    Couldn't sleep after the seven hour workout in Arconia today. Creepy's been pouting in his room since I threw a book at him the other day. He's probably learned more from that book than any that hasn't been thrown at him.

    Took a drive around the city in the Creepmobile: gas fumes and smoke spewing out the front end, sparks from a loose catalytic converter cover shooting out the back end (finally, it fell off). People in cars in the next lane glared at me like I was Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies, out for a ride in the jenny.

    Drove over to the Hollywood Park Casino on Century. Walked around inside for a while looking for grifters, hookers or thugs. You know, just looking for a familiar face on the holidays.

    Drove over to the 24-hour hamburger joint where I was mugged a few years back. Drug dealers, streetwalkers and muggers, but surprisingly no familiar faces.

Arconian Snapshot

Tags: face licker, cabbage patch, Arco, mars attacks, pageboy, raggedy ann, crack ho, Danny DeVito, penguin, the fat man, dubious, kame, the giggler, anarchist, crusty, stockboy, pricklouse, proctalgia, lantrify, gongoozler, graveolent, philodox

It is better to wear out than to rust out.---Richard Cumberland

    Cabbage Patch the crack ho came into the Arco today while I was stocking the Gatorade in the freezer. She's got a new Mars Attacks hairdpiece that looks better than her Pageboy and Raggedy Ann wigs. She shouldn't have any trouble attracting attention standing on the street corner wearing the Mars Attacks piece. It makes her look like Danny DeVito's Penguin with a tall cactus on his head.

    Therelle The Face Licker came in, too. He had to rest his tongue from walking up to strangers on the sidewalk and licking their face as he does every day. Both Face Licker and Cabbage Patch seemed taken aback to find ME working for wages. They had gotten used to thinking of me as a man of dubious leisure. The fat man has gone square. What's the neighborhood coming to?

    Yes, kids, I work at a gas oasis with Alaa The Giggler and a new guy named Kamel. I'm getting good at filling propane tanks. You'll recognize me right off if you see me there. I'm the sweating, groaning anarchist in the freezer. I couldn't make this stuff up if I smoked pot all day.

Currently Engaged

Tags: email, emailians, gas station, store, hobo, frieght train, spoilage, tenesmus, ploiter, plutomaniac, blowmaunger, surd, twitchel

It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.---Charles Caleb Colton

One of you emailians suggested it wouldn't be six months before I discovered the flaws in my Arconian employers (my $6.25 an hour paid exercise program), declared war and got out on the street again. PUHLEEZE! It wasn't six hours before I saw the flaws here.

PUHLEEZE. They must have $5,000 worth of over-stock stacked to the ceilings. Maybe $10,000 worth. There is no running spoilage recordkeeping or control processes. No inventory purchases trends charting.

Everything is done on scraps of paper. The manager is spending 9 or 10 hours a day trying to account for what's going on in her store, climbing over half-empty cases of hot beer trying to count her stock daily and running around to the wholesale stores to make last minute purchases on her guesstimates. The back room looks like earthquake country or my daughter's bedroom.

Give me six months running that place and I could get sales up 20 percent and overhead down 30 percent. Yes, I said 30 percent. I could cut the cost of supplying (inventory) and running (labor) that store down by one third. I've done it before WITHOUT the fancy inventory software that this Arco has. I could manage that place working two hours a day after I got it organized. It's much smaller than the store I ran in San Antonio.

But that's not what I'm there for. I'm there to get some exercise for my upcoming adventures as a freight car hobo. So I give a damn about my employer's flaws. I'm currently engaged in my own.

14 Pumps And 400 Feet Of Register Tape

Tags: sashaying, Daisey Dukes, gas pumps, gay, waiter, pygophilous, quakebuttock, quibberdick, irrumate, gardyloo, cachinnator, stinkard, sodomite, hamesucken, hemothymia

Your neighbor is the man who needs you.---Elbert Hubbard

     Uuuuggggh! It turned out to be 10 hours in Arconia. Ten hours on my fracturing heels processing pump orders. Processing, processing, processing. Grabbing twenties and punching in pump amounts as fast as my fingers could go. There is no end of gas consumption in Los Angeles. No end.

     Hell is a lot of things. Yes. There are many levels of hell. One of them is 14 gas pumps and 400 feet of cash register tape.

     Creepy brought me a surprise plate of spaghetti around 5. He came sashaying across the gas station parking lot in his fire engine red Daisey Duke cutoff jean shorts carrying the aluminum foil-wrapped plate like a West Hollywood waiter bringing dinner to his biggest tipper. I was mortified.

     It looked WAY too snugly wugly domestic blissness to my Arco co-workers and they started teasing me about being gay.

     Screw it. I don’t care what they think. I was hungry and my roommate makes a mean plate of spaghetti.

Crack Ho Wig Collection

Tags: crack, crack ho, red wig, crack motel, wittol, witling, wetewold, nympholepsy, jarble, jabberknowle

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play--Friedrich Nietzsche

     The Arconians cut my hours back to three today, giving me a few hours of "Kid Rock" easy listening time. One of the crack hoes must've been doing business up against my motel room door last night because this morning there was an awful raggedy red wig on my doorstep. I checked for lice and wore it over to the Arco for my morning coffee. It'll make a nice addition to my crack ho wig collection.

     One of the other Motel Marquis residents, Kevin, has an old car with broken door locks he can't afford to replace. The crack whores do business in his car at night. Drives Kevin crazy. I'll not tell you what disgusting things he finds in his car every morning just before he drives his daughter to school.

Poverty is vulgar.

I Miss Pimping

Tags: pimp, pimping, callgirls, gas station, Russian, gypsy, valley girl, Dragon Lady, one-eyed Rob, flesh-pedaling, pandering, gypsy, cab, taxi, escort agency, techno-pop, Ukranian, moonstruck, slacker, amore, Coyote, hookers, prostitutes, trugabelly, zefrank, gundygut, groaker, jarvis, lubbard, macrogaster, loafer, idler, snool, ripesuck, snurt

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. ---Mudhead

Six hours on my feet tonight working at the Arco gas station as a cash register clerk. Got a sudden nostalgia for the stone crazy halcyon days of pimping my fast Lumina all night, every night for The Dragon Lady, One-Eyed Rob, The Midget, The Hungarians, the Bulgarians and every other flesh-peddling legal panderers of the twisted night.

I kinda miss Motel Du Jour, Peekaboo Police, Perverts On Parade, Taxicab Mafia Tag, Racecar Randy, Liar's Poker and all the other games of the wicked one has to learn if one is going to survive the occupation of driving callgirls to their appointments for escort agencies.

I have to admit, I kinda miss young women peeing, puking and passing out in my car. I kinda miss the stalking, gawking and mad midnight missions . . . the wild west outlaw nature of the work . . .  the adrenaline rushes. It was like seeing a different car crash every night. Hell, it was like being in a different car crash every night.

I miss bruising my eardrums with blasting-loud techno-pop as me and The Russian blew past traffic on the 101. I miss Ukrainians throwing me around Super Eight Motel rooms and running naked on the 2 a.m. beaches with a whirling, twirling moonstruck gypsy woman. I miss pulling leopard skin-clad women out of Santa Monica Park trees. I miss chaperoning pothead valley girls to New York City and bouncing around inside my car waiting for the after hours clubs to open at 6 a.m.

Okay, I'll admit it. I miss the international sex, too. French, British, Check, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Filipino, South African, Hungarian, Australian, Haitian, Spanish, Puerto Rican, German, and Italian sex (some you've seen on TV). That was kinda interesting.

Six more hours in Arconia tomorrow.