These Fortunes Divide.

I emailed into work around the end of lunch and told them I had quite over-extended myself at Jazzercise and that I would not be coming into work today, and that tomorrow was quite indistinctly a wee bit iffy, but I would of course let them know by, say, dinner, tomorrow.

I had an itch and decided I would rearrange all the furniture in my flat, and I have rather large furniture. Without any help I managed to accomplish this between 2 and 4 P.M. on Saturday with little regard for what such exertions would do to my physical well being. I jerked, and yanked and hauled, and I was in every way successful in reordering the universe to my liking, but this morning, while in bed, realizing that there are in very many ways more days behind me than in front of me, I decided to use this day to not go into that tarsome office, but seeing as the day was halfway gone anyway the decision was in several ways already made for me.

There are always so many people at work scurrying about like demented beetles. I doubt they will even notice that I am gone. I hope the elevator man notices. He is my new fetch. Tall, handsome, in a suit and tie, and always beeps me up to my floor. He is really the only thing at work that interests me, and on Friday we exchanged quite a few words about, if you can believe it, the rain. It rains so infrequently in Los Angeles it has a way of bringing people together.

Pursuant To The Preceding Language.

Drama in the disco, and how.

The excitement, sound, fury and ignorant media fueled rage of the election is spilling over into the daily commute generally and more specifically into the clickety clackety carriage to the Westside. I really am starting to give props to the women in my office that take Lyft in every day.

Anyway, on the bus, deep into Wodehouse and some Plaid remix when in my periphery I notice a commotion and I immediately dismiss it as an attempt to secure meth or something less serious, but it is fixing to be a buzzkill whatever it is. I raise the volume and concentrate on the happenings at Blandings Castle until, suddenly, another voice is raised, and the commotion descends into an all out confrontation. 

OK. I’ll bite. At a minimum I can secure some good audio or a video I can upload. I paused the mix to investigate, and in the end I got some good audio, but no video, but that’s not for here. 

So the first homie was speaking in Spanish, and as near as I could gather he was some type of guerilla Donald Trump supporter proselytizer and he was conversing with a busload of largely Spanish speakers on the evils of the ‘Demon Witch Hillary’ or some such thing. Second dude was a white dude with an admirable command of Spanish, but was having none of it. He screamed at him that Trump was a sexist, he groped women and bragged about it on tape, and the usual line adding that to call Hillary a witch is sexist. He made some disparaging comments in Spanish, said that he wasn’t even voting for Hillary, but Trump was just the worst. 

Sadly, the spectacle ended when the second guy realized I was filming and that most of the people on the bus, including himself, were hardly '>with her'.

I mean this was golden. People arguing over politics in the open on public transport, and the bus was packed with people. The old adage goes something like Drunks, lunatics and Americans are the only people who speak on public transport, and in this case there was no denying they were Americans, and energized Americans at that. Whatever could put them in such a state? 

Oh, that’s right, The State. 

When You Are Alone In The Kitchen.

I spent a moment this morning contemplating the possibility of wearing the vintage Ralph Lauren. Straight from the 80’s, never sold in Japan (which pisses them off) and just make all those threadheads stew just to give it to them hot. I tried it on, and of course it looked amazing on me, but I just couldn’t do it. I don’t know if I was compensating for finally commenting on hypebeast or what, but my sudden urge to step out of my comfort zone in chambray was quickly quashed with an internal monologue going something not unlike this:

‘Just wear the green Prada.’

‘Forrest or Emerald?’

‘Forrest for fucksake!’

‘I don’t know. What if it’s cold?’

‘Raw silk cardigan in moss.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s an entirely normal thing for people to wear.’

‘I just don’t know.’

‘Fucksake!’

‘The purple Lanvin?’

‘I  really don’t  have time for this.’

‘It goes with the moss cardigan as well. ’

‘Jesus fucking fucksake and for fucksake’s fuck. Perfectly normal people wear Prada, and perfectly normal people wear green. Just put the fucking shit on and go to the fucking westfuckingside already. Fuck.’

And I went, and owing to yesterday’s meltdown at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at the Westfield food court I went to another CB&TL; The one in the CAA building, which in and of itself makes me shudder, but when I got there it managed to be even worse than I had feared because as soon as I walked in it became readily apparent to me that I was not the only one who decided to wear a cardigan to work. 

Prissy little shit in front of me in something in charcoal or otherwise generic as air decided he couldn’t leave the establishment without a spoon. This, despite the fact that he was holding a black coffee and a panini didn’t shake him, and a daresay neither did my withering eye, but he got it all the same anyway. It was the least we could do.

We Were Excited For You.

How a person manages to make it to Century City by 7:00 am with an iced triple espresso in hand ready to tackle a day’s worth of minimally taxing administrative and legal tasks is something that I shall leave to future historians to ponder. I did, however, it should be mentioned have a tee-total fucking melt-down in the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and I had it right there on the spot and in real time. There was no texting customer service an hour later, or waking up in the middle of the night to rage-tweeting my sweet heart out. No. I laid it on the line, and I was shaking like a reed. I may as well have been urinating in public.

One thing about the Coffee Bean is the utter lack of excuses or resistance. They are just like, ’Oh, our bad, we can fix that, and we can do it right quick’. Not like Starbucks from the land where the customer is always wrong who will just stand there and tell you that ‘No, actually, coffee has always been purple. It’s just you.’ or my personal favorite, ‘small is the new way you spell large.’

We made it here, and I suppose that is the most important thing. No one was injured or maimed although a few people may have dislocated something or other on the clickety-clackety carriage to the westside. Speaking of which, I almost forgot to get off at my stop; Off to Westwood I was almost taken so absorbed in reading about  the crooked, corrupt & criminal Leonard DiCaprio. Shit is delicious, but we made it. Fates collide and shit.

We Focused On The Distractions.

The weekends really are crucial when you spend your weekdays in Century City. Running errands after work is absolutely not the thing so every moment of the weekend counts.

I left early Saturday  morning for the coffee that just had to get inside me. Being Los Angeles someone was of course screaming nonsensically in the distance.

‘SCIENTOLOGISTS! NAZI PAPARAZZI’ 

They wailed and it got louder and more menacing the closer I came to my destination,

‘FUCKING SCIENTOLOGY! NAZI PAPARAZZI!’

I couldn’t get to the café fast enough. Retreating east on Franklin there was some Brah of Sunset driving a yellow Ferrari that lacked any kind of muffler. He was trying to drop off a date that was looking as embarrassed as you’d expect someone normal to look being driven around in a yellow Ferrari. I think we were just all happy to see the whole thing not end with someone having their stomach pumped. 

Everything got done, and I am not even sure why I put in the effort since it all just fell to shit this morning. A deluge southern California has not seen the likes of struck the moment I walked out my front door. Possibly several moments prior, but it was still in strong effect and it immediately pushed me back inside. There was even lightning and thunder from the special effects crew. I was contemplating taking Uber into work when it finally subsided.

Half way down Santa Monica I realize I left half my shit at my place. Phone charger, my lunch, and any sense of higher purpose in this world. All back in the flat. Typical.

Come Back To Again.

Alfred Sung is what I opted for this morning. Of all the scents at my reach I chose it.  An unholy mixture of Valentine Day candy heart purple dye and olfactory confusion that does many things, not least of which is guarantee plenty of breathing room on the bus. I laid it on with a trowel this morning, and I just couldn’t care less. It is either this or the entire bus smelling of cilantro, salsa and Axe body spray. I won’t do it. Which is to say I can’t. I managed to stay relatively vertical when Hillary Clinton walked out onto the debate stage wearing white after Labor Day, but the accumulation of it all could prove just too unsettling. Alfred Sung it is.

I arrived at work and managed to get through 28 minutes of mindless activity before I had to break for coffee and carbs. I’m a little shocked at how many carbs I purchased. Crackers, pretzels and crisps in a single trip and I didn’t even have a basket. I just clutched the things and stood in line as though waiting to be sent to the gulag.  The pretzels are endorsed by Mike Trout who is just about the most underrated fatty in baseball besides Evan Gattis and Kyle Seager so it was really given and I can take them home and gorge which I will be doing if the Dodger’s don’t advance to the World Series.

Everyone I have come into contact with this morning has been unusually kindly and I have to attribute it to the Alfred Sung. I think it has a hypnotic and entrancing effect on the weak minded, and any time you walk through Century City you are positively walking through actual clouds of detached, medicated dementia so the slightest aphrodisiac can do wonders. 

I Identify With The Margin.

The breakroom is like a train station at rush hour. Jam packed with the gabby, overweight and standing eaters. If I am not able to microwave my breakfast burrito soon I may expire , but I simply can’t face that much teased hair and shallow, superficial conversation. My friend has promised to take me to the Farmers Market later so that should be somewhat of a tonic. If I live that long.

Until then I am listening to the emotional detritus that remains following last night’s presidential debate. They are on the radio, and they have opinions and they are mostly confident, angry opinions. The kind of opinions you would expect to find on people who have all the answers, who have everything figured out, and there isn’t a thing you can say to enlighten them on any subject whatsoever. They know that much. They preface broad unsubstantiated claims with qualifiers like 'I am black' or 'As a woman' as though the words somehow shield the exclamations from critique or criticism. Peremptory logical fallacy is now the default political position.

Americans become very emotional over elections as well as sporting events. The fact that they find them intellectually indistinguishable needs little comment. Call the Democrats the Cavs, and the GOP the Knicks and break! Emotional devastation and depression remains. In addition to a civilization wholly undeserving of preservation.

Forget The Details.

An imperious and near invisible glass door preventing me from reaching my ATM had me erupting into senile squeaks which quickly descended into blinding rage. There was a pygmy in a suit, holding some device on the other side, it was all just too much to handle. How could everything this morning go so perfectly up until this moment? And it is entirely Bank of America’s fault. As I wheeled around on my heels I was infuriatingly positioned in front of a Chase Bank ATM conveniently not hidden behind a glass barrier. Dude in the suit got two fingers, but I’m not sure he understood how upset I was. 

Walking back to my office there were construction workers all about and I must have looked like a kitten in a box of yarn. Once back at the office I just stewed. I will just go back later when the glass barrier is removed and admire the ‘scenery’ It gets me away from the old desk anyway.

The General mood of the office appears to be something akin to forced paranoia which is amusing in the lighter moments and quite beyond hysterical the rest of the time. My capacity for disregarding salacious celebrity gossip is consequentially being tested beyond anything I have ever experienced. You show me an 'Office Internet Policy' and I automatically stop understanding words and language.

I Am The Prey.

I very well may perish on this clickity clackety barge to the westside. Metro couldn't possibly be more useless, and I honestly prefer unemployment and penury to being shuttled about in such a demeaning fashion. Merely making eye contact with some people can be a journey into god knows where. It is the most unpleasant hour I have experienced in quite some time. 

And I was lied to. Straight to my face I was. I do not work on cases like this and I certainly do not work with people like this. Personalities like acid and bone structure like algae. However, I have been tricked and now here I am in Century City. Fuck it all to hell and to the ground. I only hope I can get through the next five weeks without 'making a 'scene', but I warn everyone, it is only a hope, not a promise.

I have found a Coffee Bean using the google and I don't care how far it is I'm going. I'm taking my next seven lunches  right now and will return refreshed, caffeinated and bright.

None Of It Is Meant For Us.

Well this is one of those mornings where I have obviously smoked too much pot and my boss has done way too much coke. Why in heaven’s name he is off to get coffee at this hour is beyond the reasoning of sages, but the chemistry this morning is ‘interesting’ to say the least. Luckily this is my last day of this before I go off to the CC.

Last night was absolutely obliterated by the nonsensical file structure Apple iTunes imposes on my musical collection. Placing Joy Division’s Substance in a folder called ‘Compilations’ and then doing the same thing with Best of Erasure, Room On Fire, Boy In Da Corner, and the list goes on and on. And then when I rectify the lurid matter by placing the file where it ought to be, so it shows up in iTunes where it ought to, iTunes then pretends to be stupid and useless (which it very well at its core might be) by not being able to locate the audio file. So I have to show it where I put it. Like creating a folder in Outlook for shit you don’t care about kind of useless ass step. That is how weak ass sophisticated iTunes is. I can’t even.

This is beyond the seemingly endless task of replacing the incorrect album artwork they ascribe to my stuff. It is seriously disrupting the joyousness of my existence. Like stepping onto the platform as the train is about to leave the station, but then the doors open at the last minute. Just so you can get on. Because all the wine really is for you. I mean Me. That kind of joyousness is being disrupted. And it really hurts. Sort of.