Time to work up an interest in avarice and covetousness.

Tags: Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed, Sloth, viral video, jarvis, zefrank, bedlam, nalts, marquisdejolie, Ironweed, White Rhino, Crusty The Stockboy, Cabbage Patch

Be a friend to thyself, and others will be so, too.---Thomas Fuller

    My crack motel room roommate Creepy went to bed with all the lights on in his room. Apparently he's afraid the wino violence will spill over from the Arco gas station to the Motel Marquis. Silly man. It's the other way around.

    I went for a midnight stroll in the fog. Cabbage Patch was leaning against her lamp post.

    "Heard you kicked ass tonight," she said, grinning.

    "Where'd ya hear that?"

    "S'out ona street. You do that?"

    "A wayward ho, a wayward le, a pirate I shall always be. Arrrrr arrrrrr arrrrrr."

    "I heard THAT. Good fer you, Popeye."

    Even $10 street walking crack whores don't like rude winos.

    There's a new crack ho working the sidewalk in front of the motel: a cute 18/19 year-old Latina. A white Toyota pickup pulled up in front of the motel and dropped her off. I had the $10, but last night I saw the same john drop streetwalker Marie off and the night before Cabbage Patch and the night before that really raggedy blonde and I lost my appetite. The chain chain chain of hoes was just too much reality to get much bang out my ten bucks.

    I saw "Monster's Ball" down at the promenade in Santa Monica last night. Nice movie. Made me homesick. Also reminded me of an interracial relationship I had 8 or 9 years ago. Uh, two relationships, actually. No, wait. It was three. Must've been my black & blue period. One of 'em was REALLY hot. We broke furniture.

    Okay. I think I've mastered pride, sex and violence. Time to work up an interest in avarice and covetousness.

Attack of the Loitering Stumblebums

Tags: Arco winos, stumblebums, fight club, gas station, Boxer Bob, Crusty The Stockboy, White Rhino

The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.---Francois de La Rochefoucauld

    Three of the Arco winos attacked me behind the Arco today. One of them tried to bust a 32-ounce beer bottle over my head after my first punch knocked him to the ground. I side kicked him in the bladder and knocked THAT idea out of his mushy head.

    I was trying not to hurt the fragile stumblebums, but the instigator, some fat woman alkie pushing an infant in a baby carriage who has been drinking beer on the property so long (while the baby fries in the sun) she thinks she owns the lot behind the store, that bitch wouldn't let the two men heed my warnings. Noooooooooo. She kept egging them on, egging them on to challenge the fat, bespectacled stock boy. So they nudged me and spat at me and pillow-punched me until I went Popeye on them.

    Then the woman hit me in the back and when I turned on her she said, "HA! You can't hit a woman!"

    So I punched her in the neck. Like I said, I wasn't trying to hurt them, just trying to give their clouded minds a wake up call. It was more like a pillow fight, really, but the woman taunted me that she was calling her boyfriend, "Boxer Bob" to come and kick my ass real good.

    "Tell him come get some," I told her. I returned to the back storage bin about a hundred feet from the store to finish my back stocking.

    Ten minutes later, a young man, late twenties, came running angrily up to the back storage bin talking shit as he approached, but I backed him off quick with the padlock wrapped around my middle finger like a brass knuckle.

    Him I woulda hurt. He saw it in my eyes and ran off to call the cops. So much 'show but no go' for "Boxer Bob'.

    The cops finally came and after I explained that I had asked them nicely several times to not drink alcohol on the property (they refused) and to leave the property (they refused) and after I read them the riot act (they threatened to kill me) and that yes, I punched the soggy motherfuckers . . . .  after all that explanation, the cops said that they preferred it if I would just call them next time.

    Wasn't much for them to do, really. It wasn't a hate crime: three white winos against one old, pissy, white stock boy. Misdemeanor battery, maybe, the cop told me, but it was a case of 'he said, she said'.

    "We have a camera back there," I said, "You can look at the tape if you don't believe me," but I could see the cop didn't want to get bogged down in gas station mini-drama.

    There's a new sign on the Arco cash register as the result of this incident. Basically it reads that clerks are not to sell beer to homeless or trouble making persons and if they do, they will be held liable for any financial repercussions.

    One of the clerks said he wasn't sure what that means and I said it meant he would have to come down to the station and bail me out.

    No beer to the homeless or troublemakers, one of the clerks told me later, who're we gonna sell beer to? And the other clerk, Eddie, is afraid to sell ANYONE beer now. Technically, he can't even buy some for himself when his shift is over (Eddie's on his third month of homelessness).

    As an ex and semi-homeless person myself, I can relate to the plight of the homeless. It's the shitheads that give the rest of us a bad name.

ARCONIAN NEWS BREAK: Night Man Day Locked Down

Tags: nuthouse, Night Man Day, Arco, gas station, Cocopuffs, Lynnie The Leacher, Marquisdejolie

It is easy enough to be pleasant when life flows by like a song. But the man worthwhile is one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.---Ella Wheeler Wilcox

    The Arco night man, Day, has gone cuckoo for Cocopuffs. Pissed me off when I heard they had him on the 72-hour observation hold at the nuthouse. I've been trying to break into that place for years. Three hots and a cot; you can't beat asylum living for low cost shelter. Best residency bargain in town. Bastards wouldn't let me in, even after I walked into their outpatient center barefooted and peed on their carpet, asking them what was I doing there?

    Alah and I plan to visit Day in the nuthouse this Sunday (they've extended his vacation two more weeks). I have experience visiting the mentally infirm, so I filled Allah in today on some of the protocols. One of them is to resist the temptation to pretend to the patient that he's not in a mental ward. Why confuse him more? I always used to ask Lynnie The Leacher, whenever I was visiting him at the nut farm, when was he gonna be finished being crazy and blow the joint? It gives them goals, I think.

The Flatulent Chinaman

 Tags: fartiste, flatulent, gasaholics, rummies, rugrats, pocket pirates, roadies, gas swine

   Eight hours in Arconia today. It was the usual steady stream of gasaholics, rude drug addicts, unintelligible rummies, rugrats, pocket pirates, disgruntled roadies, road warriors, senile old ladies, abusive twits and impatient gas swine, but my work day was pleasantly punctuated by The Flatulent Chinaman.

    The little man in gray sweatpants strode into the store smiling, swinging his arms as if he was marching in a parade and trumpeting loud, baritone farts with EACH and EVERY step he took.

    Step, braaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAck, step, blurrrrrrrrWOOOOOORPPTFF, step, bloEEEEEEEERACK, step, brrrOOOOOOOOCKK.

    These were not shy, hissing farts mind you. These were LOUD, DEEP, "I'm Flatulent and I'm Proud" farts that only someone who has been exposed to the more gregarious cultures can appreciate.

    Our own little "fartiste" Le Petomaine! Wow. Happy is the man who can propel himself through life to the tune of his own spincter, is what I say.

    The other customers turned their heads and pretended they didn't hear the booming butt trumpet. Eddie was behind the counter at the cash register and I had the dubious honor of following the happily backfiring little man into the store from outside where I had been taking a smoke break.

    Just as our musical Petomaine sputtered up to the counter, he ended his colonious concerto with a four fart crescendo! The timing was impeccable. It had all the resonance and German gusto of Beethoven.

    Amazing. Stupendous. A Four Star Farting Extravaganza! That such unabashed divestitures of abdominal gas, resounding through the otherwise peaceful Arco gas station, much akin to a barrage of 12 gauge shotgun blasts, could come from such a diminutive little fellow such as this happy old fart just flabbergasted me.

    For a moment, I just froze in my tracks in awe. Then, I applauded, but everyone else just pretended not to hear the music.

Even The Homeless Hate the Homeless

Tags: homeless, homelessness, self hate, Creepy, roommate, working homeless, homeless on wheels

It is a wise bum who knows his own kind.---Mudhead

    One of my fellow Arconians, Eddie, is homeless. He lives in his car. He admits to living in his car, but denies he's homeless.

    Living in a car two months qualifies a person as homeless, I told him, but he still denies being homeless. He can't bring himself admit it. He has the same bigoted prejudice most people have about the homeless: homeless means you're bad or stupid or irresponsible. He's been raised to hate the homeless just like everyone else in America. He doesn't realize how many hundreds of thousands of working homeless there are in this country.

    I gave him some tips on where to get free showers and free hot lunches in the neighborhood. Eddie works more hours than I do at the Arco, but he's about $3.50 an hour short of qualifying for an apartment. I was going to let him use my shower, but my recently homeless roommate Creepy doesn't want any homeless people in our room.

A Lot Of Tension In This Town

Tags: geopolitical hate, heterosexuals, monosexuals, pansexuals, metrosexuals, crackers, police, self hate, Angelinos, 7-11s, smokers, beachheads

When you dig another out of his troubles, you find a place to bury your own.---Mudhead

    The guy who tried to read me the riot act about 'one bag or two' came in to the gas station again yesterday morning and harangued Arco clerk Rene about HER manners. He threatened to take his business elsewhere which is what all us Arco cashiers want him to do.

    Rene is Hispanic. Besides Rene and I, this customer also berated the Iranian clerk for HIS countertop manners towards blacks, so it looks like I was wrong the other day when I implied that this brother doesn't like white people and/or paper sack options.

    My bad. It's Arco clerks he hates . . . or white, brown, yellow, orange and gray people.

    This got me to thinking about the geopolitical map of Los Angeles. As I understand it:
     the residents of Beverly Hills hate poor people (any trash who makes less than $250,000 a year),
    West Hollywoodies hate heterosexuals,
    Los Felizians hate monosexuals,
    Santa Monicans hate pansexuals,
    Hollywooders hate tourists,
    downtowners hate the homeless,
    Inglewooders hate crackers,
    Comptonians hate the police,
    South Centralizers hate each other,
    Venice Beachers hate anyone over 30,
    San Fernando Valleyites hate Los Angeles,
    Gardenia hates Americans and
    Redondo Beachers hate 7-11s.

    Oh yeah, Rob Ryner hates smokers.

Soon To Be The Ex-Employee of a Muslim Cheapskate

Tags: holiday pay, cheap, stingy, greedy, selfish, capitalism sucks, revolution, big nickel, nickel hog, the gimmies, piggy, cabbage queer, geetus sniffer, fresser

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.---George MacDonald

    Well, I think I may have screwed myself out of another job. The Arco manager wanted to confirm with me today that I was working Christmas day and I told her (in private, away from the other employees) "No, not unless I get double time for working the holiday."

    The manager said matter-of-factly that the owner was Muslim, so he doesn't pay extra for Christmas.

    "Christmas is a national holiday in America," I told her, "and this Arco is technically located in America. I'm still mad about Thanksgiving. Besides, Galen (the owner) just sold that vacant lot next door for a million bucks (the surveyors were there today, marking off the spots where the strip mall will be built). He doesn't need to be so cheap." (We're talking about an extra $18 or $24 here)

    The Arco owner doesn't pay holidays. He doesn't pay overtime or sick pay. He provides no health insurance. He doesn't even like paying minimum wage. So I figured the manager would just take me off the schedule, but when I went back to the store for cigarettes a couple of hours after my shift was over, the clerks there were hailing me as the leader of the Arco holiday pay revolution.

    Oops.

The Magnum 32 Gang

Tags: Tonto-san, Crenshaw Boulevard, South Central, Magnum 32 Gang, beer pimp, losers, winos, calabash, boozers, hooch hister, hooch hounds, hoocherie, doggins

Let your boat of life be light, packed only with what you need.--Jerome K. Jerome

    The beer shelf I have to stock the most here at the Arco gas station is the Magnum 32 and 40 ounce bottle shelf. That's because 5 or 6 beggars, tramps and drug addicts ( who hang together loosely on the street as a group of loiterers I call The Magnum 32 Gang ) are regular customers.

    Tom, the long-haired American Indian-looking Asian member of the gang works 5 or 6 hours a week at the bicycle shop next door to the Arco. I don't know if you could call that bicycle shop a real business as one would normally define a place of merchandising. It's the garage in back of someone's house, but they open their garage door every morning and roll out the recycled bikes, which I assume have been salvaged from some junkyard, and they have a sign, so I guess it is a business.

    Tom mostly walks up and down the Crenshaw Boulevard sidewalk from the bicycle shop on Marine Street to the Immigration Assurance and Self Help Center on Manhattan Beach Boulevard (that street name should be familiar to you as it is just a mile west of the Immigration Assurance Center on Manhattan Beach Boulevard where I used to live . . . under the bridge).

    The first time I saw Tom about a year ago, I thought he was a movie extra in costume who had lost the western in which he was supposed to be filmed. He was sitting on a bus stop bench, not wanting to catch any bus, waiting for the inevitable. I've asked him several times over the months that I've seen him benchsitting if he was waiting for a bus and he just sneers at me as if I had asked an obviously stupid question.

    As long as I don't talk to him about bus schedules, though, I find him to be a surprising articulate and witty drunk. The mean-spirited part of me called him Tonto until I learned his Christian name. Since he's Asian, I suppose the more politically correct derogate would have been Tonto-san. He's good for at least two 32 ounce Magnums a day.

    Jeff, The Amazing Spineless Mammal, is a street thin Caucasian piece of crap whose youthful face and piercing blue eyes contrast greatly with his shock of platinum gray hair, his Colonel Sanders white goatee and his sidewalk-ironed and dusted clothes.

    Jeff's the 'touchy-feeley' member of the gang, always jabbering to anyone who will listen about how bad he feels that his fiancé has to turn tricks on the street with construction workers to support their alcohol and drug habits.

    I feel his pain. Like hell I do. Any man who would accept his fiancees trick money must be in a lot of pain from walking around without a spine. Jeff's good for at least two 32 ounce Magnums a day plus five or six 16 ounce cans.

    I already told you about the old man, the ex-Arco manager now on SSI. He's mostly a 16 ounce can man. He's a jabberer, too, but he mostly talks about his glory days. There's this other guy in the gang that I haven't gotten to know much about. He looks like a hungover Santa Claus who has shaved off his beard to throw the cops off his trail.

    I made the mistake Thanksgiving of feeding Jeff and this guy some Turkey dinners out at their bus stop benches and after they had eaten, Jeff came back and informed me that he would be glad to do me the favor of accepting any more holiday gifts I had in mind.

    He spoke the words politely and earnestly in a sincere and kindly tone that suggested he would be happy to receive gifts from me and that there was no need for me to thank him for accepting my gifts or feel embarrassed and I smiled at him and thanked him as I considered punching the shameless bastard square in his 'The World Revolves Around MY Needs' nose, but I remembered how some self-righteous do-gooders had tried to rub the free food they were giving ME when I was homeless, down and out, in my face and I understood what Jeff was getting at.

    I don't have to LIKE a bastard to feed him. I wish more of my countrymen understood that.

Cookie Eating Time

I would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world.---Comte de Mirabeau

    Finished reading "The Soul School, Confessions of a Passenger on Planet Earth" (1995) by Guy Murchie, author of "The Seven Mysteries of Life". Too much 'passenger', not enough 'soul', though his travels through Iraq and Afghanistan are topical.

    This Guy has lead the life I have long fantasized about living myself, a kind of spiritual Jack Kerouac with credit cards and train reservations, so why did I find his writing so . . . uh, flat? He seemed somehow detached from . . . let's see, from . . . ah, from the grit of life. That's it. Not enough grit.

    The cookie-eating phase of Ramadan started today, praise Allah. Finally all the Muslims in my neighborhood can stop fasting and taking out their low blood sugar levels on the Arco clerks. Religions that fast really put an additional burden on the unbelievers.

Another Satisfied Customer

Tags: buddy, self-fulfilling prophecy, agenda, racial intimidation, reverse racism, first gear racism, second gear racism, paper bag discrimination, 24-ounce profiling, attitude adjustment hour, boozery, cop's bottle, crazy water, Dutch suds, cut the wolf loose, bag o hooch, blame squirrel, playing old tapes, foreshots, Balm of Gilead

Faith is to believe what we do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.---St. Augustine

    Today a guy comes in to the gas station and buys two cans of 24 ounce beer. Usually when someone buys two individual cans instead of a six pack, he's buying one for himself and one for a buddy or a girlfriend out in the car and asks for separate bags so that each person can hold their own beer without getting their hands cold or wet.

    So I asked this guy if he wanted two individual bags or one. He goes off on me, telling me, "Look, buddy (emphasis on the word 'buddy' in a very unfriendly tone), ALL brothers don't start drinking their beer as soon as they get out of the store. Do you understand that, buddy!?"

    At first I didn't understand what he was getting at. Then I got it. He was accusing me of racism, of stereotyping his brothers and sisters as one bag alcoholics or something. It seemed silly to me, but his face was serious business, so I just told him, "Hey, I was just asking how you wanted it bagged. I REALLY don't care what you do with it, buddy. Stick it up your ass for all I care."

    This guy walked in thinking I was a racist because of the color of my skin and he walked out having proven his thesis correct to himself. Another satisfied customer.

Where's My Community Service Plaque?

Tags: homeless, parking lots, creeps, beggars, stink-muggers, plaque, award, community service, gas station, jarvis

Dare to begin! ---Horace

    A friend wrote about my little ID card tet a teat:

    “The age is 35, If you don't look at least 35 it is the sellers job to ask for ID, That's the law, it's not discrimination. Your boss can get in trouble if he tries to stop you for asking for ID.”

My response:

    “Well, the most important thing is that I can catch a $200 ticket if I get caught selling a minor cancer sticks. There are cops out there who cannot sleep well until everyone in this neighborhood has a police arrest record. Convictions don't matter. Just arrests. The cops just want everybody in the system.

    The reason I thought to write about this woman tonight was that one of the other clerks told me today that a customer matching her description came in early this morning, got pissed at being asked for ID and threw a bunch of sunflower seed packets at his head. I'll bet it's the same demented woman.

    I'm not the only clerk to yell back at belligerent customers, but I'm the only one who tells them not to come back.

    And I'm the only one who tells them that with all that cellulite they're packing in their trunks, they probably shouldn't be buying that 40-ouncer anyway, which is one of the reasons why the manager likes to keep me in the cooler (besides the fact that inventory loss and spoilage is way down since I was put in charge of that locked freezer--I keep a tight reign over the various beverage vendors and keep the stock properly rotated).

    I had some dipwad bastard tell me once he was going to have me fired.

    "Good," I said, "That'll give me more time to drive around the neighborhood and find out where you live."

    Most of the customers like me, though, partially because before I was hired at the Arco, they had to weave their way through a plethora of intimidating beggars to get their gas. I stopped that crap. Ran the creeps off. There's a right way and a wrong way to beg.

    You know, now that I think about it, I ought to get some sort of community service award. I ran the drug dealers out of the Motel Marquis parking lot, the drunks from drinking beer in the front of the motel, the hoes from doing business in customer's cars parked in the back of the Arco, the beggars from the gas pumps, the crack heads from sucking their pipes in the vacant lot and the winos from making their messes at the station and motel dumpsters.

    I even put the neighborhood muggers on notice that some of us victims fight back. Oh, and I stopped the streetwalkers from using the motel courtyard as a toilet.

    Where's my plaque?

Never Trust Customer Relations To The Stock Boy

Tags: yak, customer relations, stockboy, ID, discrimination, to discriminate, cigarettes, carding, sthenolagnia, meretriculate, petulcity, suppalpation, trugabelly, turdefy, race relations, unasinous

Don't yak unless you can improve the silence.---Mudhead

    The lady put two one liter bottles of Pepsi on the counter and asked for a pack of Newports Box. I asked to see the lady's ID.

    "I ain't got no ID right now."

    "I'm sorry, I can't sell you . . ."

    "WHAT!!? I comes here every day!"

    "I'm sorry."

    "Nobody ever asked for my ID BEFORE!"

    "I'm sorry. Really. I need to see . . ."

    "I HEARD you! What you think? I can't hear? You stupid or somethin'? You mean you're NOT gonna sell me no MUTHERFUKEN CIGARETTES?"

    "I'm sorry . . ."

    The lady huffed out of the store, leaving the Pepsis on the counter, muttering soto voce something about crackers. Ten minutes later, she was back at the counter with her ID, fuming and ready for a scrap.

    "Now gimme my gawddamned Newports," she barked as she slapped her ID down on the counter. After checking her ID quickly, I scanned the Newports and pushed them up against the sodas I had saved for her.

    "I seen you selling that other lady cigarettes without asking for ID," she accused. "Why you didn't ask HER for ID?"

    "She didn't look as young as you . . ." I tried to flatter her.

    "That's bull! You ask ME for ID, you gotta ask EVERYONE for ID!" A line of customers was forming behind this short, youngish-looking but angry lady.

    "I'm sorry . . ."

    "Sorry don' cut it. I'm feeling discriminated against," she declared. People behind her were juggling their purchases for a better grip while waiting for the lady to leave.

    "Ma'am, it's nothing personal . . ."

    "Yes it is! I'm feeling like discrimination! You have to ask EVERYB—"

    "I'm sorr—"

    "This is discrimi—"

    "Ma'am, you're disrupting the business and insulting me. Can we let the other customers do their bus—"

    "WHA? I'm talking 'bout discrimination! You better jus—"

    "LOOK, BITCH. WHY DON'T YOU JUST WADDLE YOUR FAT ASS DOWN TO SOME OTHER STORE AND SPEW YOUR BULLSHIT? I AIN'T HAVING NO MORE OF THIS CRAP! GET OUT AND DON'T COME BACK WITHOUT A GUN! NOT TODAY, NOT TOMORROW. DO YOU MUTHERFUKEN UNDERSTAND THAT!? WHO'S NEXT?"

    That was a couple of weeks ago. They don't let me behind the counter much anymore. Better for them. Better for me.