I’m not a shopper

Black Friday “deals”. I don’t know what kind of deals you get on Black Friday. All I know, you got your Bargain Hunters rushing around, scooping up the deals. Me, I look for the deals, too. I’m a bargain hunter. I’m not a shopper. What I do, I go looking for the one thing I need. A Shopper’s different. A Shopper’s not looking for anything. Just satisfyingly an urge. Like an Addict. Many people in the land of plenty are Shoppers. That’s why there’s so much Shit laying around on give-away piles. Why the tract homes that line the endless streets have garages filled with shit. Why Self-Storage companies exist..

Norm will buy shit he may need. Shit he could probably do without. Then he’ll be broke and forced to return the thing he bought. He used to have a storage container he paid a hun or two hun a month to store all his shit he didn’t need. But he got so broke the storage company seized all his shit to cover the back rent he owed for storing the shit he didn’t really need. Self Storage Companies are the CRACK HOUSES of Capitalism. They allow you a space where you can store your extra added worthless shit. Then, when you go broke, they do you the favor of auctioning off all the worthless shit you’ve accumulated over the years. Leaving you with loser’s tears. It’s not Tragic. Capitalism doesn’t recognize Tragedy. Only profit and loss. Only the bad luck of a loser…

…and the opportunities of a Winner!

This happens so often you think maybe something in the system is broken. But nothing’s broken. Pure Capitalism is set-up to break you. Capitalism is based on Greed and Freedom. The freedom to take and take and take and trample anybody who gets in your way. I really think it’s kind of beautiful. It’s like observing the wonders of Nature. You could even call it that:

The Law Of The Jungle!

The Homeless Pack ain’t for winners

Norm is short for Normal Guy. I call him Normal Guy because he was living in his car when I met him. I thought he looked way too normal for a homeless dude. Well, the scales have fallen from my eyes over the years. There’s a whole hell of a lot of downtrodden people out there who appear Normal. Including myself. These are Capitalism’s Losers. A lot of these people became downtrodden through their Shopping Addiction. They just kept buying shit until the wishful-thinking floor they were standing on collapsed. Like my ex-girlfriend Carla. She’s never saved a dime in her life. All she’s ever done is spend. Now she’s stuck living in her car. Her and her Dog.

Carla parks her car in the office building lot across from the tennis courts. A good spot cuz the cops don’t bother you and there’s a nice clean well-lit public bathroom open 24 hours a day.

Back when I was part of the Homeless Pack I’d haul out of my minivan at five a.m. and use the bathroom. Not bad at all. Kind of cold in the winter. But everything worked and the paper dispensers were well stocked. My time with the Homeless Pack was brief. Six weeks or so until I found my current boat.

I almost didn’t buy the Double Lotus. I considered remaining with the Homeless pack indefinitely. Live in the minivan a few months or years even. Save my money. But living in the minivan was tolerable but no fun.

Especially at night.

Nights were tough. I’m not talking the sleeping part. I’m talking the laying awake part listening to the cars swish by. Maybe it would’ve been more fun if I’d had a larger vehicle to live in. Like Galaxy the homeless hippie chick’s R/V…

That’s right. She’s back. Parked in the same spot as January of 2024. Right where she got all those parking tickets. Could be she sold her r/v and a stranger now owns it. A stranger to the pack. I didn’t bother to knock on her door. See if she still owns it. I didn’t see her cat in the window. So I’m thinking some other homeless person now owns it and ain’t been clued about the threat of tickets back here on this dead end street. They don’t know the turf cuz they’re new to the Pack. The Homeless Pack.

Forewarning this newbie is not my responsibility. That’s a law of the Jungle: One’s primary responsibility is to one’s self. In other words, it’s a dog eat dog world.

I’d really like to help all of these people reduced to living on the street. I really would. Like this poor dude who sleeps on the ground along the currently overgrown Bridgeway path.

Or the dude, several dude’s actually, who sleep on the bus bench across the boulevard on the corner of Nevada street.

Well, I don’t always see them. Camped in the middle of the path. Sprawled on the bus bench. Appearing like characters in a dream. I don’t always see them. I snatch glimpses of them. They vanish as quickly as your memory of a dream. But they’re not extinct. I know sooner or later they’ll reappear. These street campers.

Unlike the Neanderthal…who will never reappear.

I’d like to help Carla. Wait a minute! Would I like to help Carla? No. I’d just as soon see her take care of herself, like a normal person does. Like Normal Guy mostly does these days. Like I’ve done all my life…except for that interval a few years ago when I lived off a former girlfriend, Amanda, a trip-and-fall Attorney, who put me up cuz they kicked me out of Clipper marina for being an illegal liveaboard and so I freeloaded off her but it was not a total freeload on account of she demeaned me in public and made me crawl on my hands and knees as her sex slave until finally I was able to escape with my life and my dog. Did I mention she was putting up my dog, too?

Shit. I’d like to help Carla. I really would. but the idea of putting her up on my boat is not a pleasant thought. Nor is it practical.

I’ve got just enough room on my boat for me, myself and I. Not me, Carla and her dog.

A Shopaholic’s weekend

A long weekend. The 27th of November thru December 1st. What did I do? Went to a Restaurant for Thanksgiving. I paid for the food, Joan paid for the wine. Very expensive wine she hauled out of her closet. Well worth the corkage fee.

Later I tried to write this blog post. Sitting at Joan’s dining room table with the heat off. It got down to forty, sitting there, in those cold cold rooms. I’m wearing a sweater and a pee coat and a muffler, trying to write. She’s won’t put the heat on cuz it runs her five hundred fat clams a month.

I’m ready to go home. Sit on my boat with two heaters blasting. Cuz the monthly bill for heating my boat is fixed at 18 dollars. And I can use as much juice as I like. So I almost did leave. Back to the cozy Double Lotus. But I had to help Joan set up her tree and pull boxes of Christmas decorations and shit off her garage shelves cuz she’s in constant pain from slipping on her stairs a week ago. She can barely lift a wet rag. Plus I gotta help her at Cosco where she likes to shop for great volumes of shit. Like not just one roll of toilet paper but 140 rolls of toilet paper. And not one bottle of wine but 87 bottles of wine. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera…

Cyber Monday Deals

Today is December 1st or Cyber Monday. What does that mean, Cyber Monday? It means Shoppers buy electronic shit. Devices. It means Devices type stores make a fortune!

I could not give a shit less about Cyber Monday. Cuz there aint no Cyber Monday “Deals.” How could there be any deals when everything is marked up at least 800% from the get go? Shit. They pay the poor coolies 15 cents a hour to make the fucking cell phones, etcetera…that means your 2 thousand dollar Eye phone should only really be costing you 85 cents. Poor Chinese dude ain’t the sucker, though. You are. But you go ahead, go ahead and buy a “device” that’s marked up more than movie theater popcorn. See if I give a shit. Matter of fact, I’m tired of even thinking about all this god damned consumerism. Just leave me alone and let me bob against the dock. Maybe feed a bird a ritz cracker. I’m not just right where I oughta be…I’m right where I belong.