Crisis, Alienation And Loss.

There are but a few fleeting moments of quietude every morning before the insecure mouth-breathing stunters start to roll in and attempt to regale no one in particular with tales of their commute or of moments where they find their work particularly challenging or they may flex and try to put those overpriced improv classes to work with what they misperceive to be their penetrating wit.

A few brief moments every morning and then they are gone. Forever lost. To say we cling to these precious fleeting moments like the jaws of alligators wrap themselves around the juicy limbs of small children at a southern Disney theme park is no small understatement. We guard these moments so preciously at times it borders on dementia because when the moment passes our work becomes a place of almost unendurable torment.

And what we put ourselves through to secure these moments shouldn't pass without comment no. The alarm, the stumbling to the bath, the bleary eyed showering, the shaving and not lacerating ones face and or neck and then the ponderous selection of something among countless gorgeous things to wear and still with the bleary eyes no less. The packing, the heaving, the walking, the avoiding of tweakers, beggars and urban burnouts and then the waiting and all of this is done at a most unchristian hour.

When my bus does come I am lucky if it contains only the usual other two middle-aged homosexual men with an obviously equal dislike for their coworkers as myself, but sometimes it is not just shall we call them my other two comrades. Sometimes, like this morning it includes all sorts of mess fighting with itself to be the worst guest at the party.

Stage left it was the angry homeless man who carries all his worldly possessions on an industrial dolly so he requires the crippled people steppy-lift to move his shit about on and off the bus. But entering stage right we had the former gang-banger who got himself shot and caught a case of the paralyzed and now has to drive himself around like yoda in a crippled people go-cart and also needs the steppy lift to get in and out of the bus.

When we arrived at the bus station I was almost breathless waiting to see how this Clash of the entitled UnTitans would play out, but predictably angry beat out over ex-banger because homie was in Nam and he just isn't taking any shit from this go-cart person who frankly none of us have ever seen before.

In the office now and the serenity of the early morning has already faded. The Jamaican woman with a really loud voice announced how she got free coffee from the kitchen and was going down to Starbucks to use some of their free creamer, but she doesn't know where the Starbucks is so I had to explain to her that it is downstairs in the lobby she has obviously been walking through blindfodled for the past five fucking weeks.

A Type of Languor That Envelopes The Senses.

Well my work schedule has suddenly opened wide up, and I really like how being reduced to one job and a full schedule of looking relentlessly well dressed has somehow now become a free and open schedule, but such is the modern world we are now living in.

There will of course have to be the library, and the bookstore, and the record store and probably the thrift store, and a furious round of eBay biddings and purchases. I went ahead and took people's 'advice' about travel and booked a holiday flight at midnight on a Wednesday so my Halloween week is now booked. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Indigenous People's Day are a complete mind-scramble, but otherwise, yes, completely wide open.

Actually, now that I think about it I am actually glad I will be missing the whole WeHo Halloween shit show. I certainly would't have had to have navigated through it like I have done in previous years, but it will be nice to be entirely removed from the entire spectacle. That, and missing the Dodger's blow the World Series are among the things I will not be missing in the coming months.

I shall be busying myself in the coming days with cultivating a leisured lifestyle or fierce relaxation, ferocious contemplation and vigorous mental regeneration. All of the world's stresses and tiresome botherings shall be washed away from my care like the filthy homeless rats have seemingly been washed away from the intersection of Pico and Robertson. These benevolent forces of tidy order and magnanimous organization seem to be working in concert with my greater aims. A phenomenon we note with satisfaction, but make no comment for that just wouldn't do.

Understanding The Depths Of Our Disappointment.

Every once in a while it is nice to enjoy a night out, and for the most part an enjoyable night out is easy enough to be had. Unless of course you decide to go to some trendy vegan joint in West Hollywood with something approaching 5 million Instagram likes and a rabid cult Pinterest following.

I started by hailing the Uber which I thought was going amazing when Jose drove up in a Cadillac and he was fine and I didn't mind telling the guy I'm fucking just what I thought of Jose, but at some point Jose got nervous over something he thought I said. He asked me if I had a question about the route, and of course I was just trying to sext the guy I'm fucking and even though he is sitting next to me in the back seat my screen is cracked so this is easier.

Sexy hot Jose driver was confused and upon reflection I just thought it must be the tinnitus brought about from some exploded EID he came across in Kandahar Province while he was rescuing some sex trafficked refugees' cats from the clutches of a crazed drug lord that was holding wide swathes of the city hostage under his villainous criminal syndicates.

He misheard a comment I had made, but it portended so much more to come.

While at the restaurant we had to contend with a cacophony of hysterical jabber and shrieks of pretend delight and Instagram posings, but that is like most restaurants.The server on the other hand fucked up the appetizer, only took the order for one starter, then thought we might want to split an entree. She was all over the mf place, but I just let it ride and ate until my sides just about burst and then I ate some more. Before desert I got up to go to the restroom as a pretext to stare disapprovingly at some noisy fat girls who obviously got off at the wrong bus stop.

I needed a massive cup of coffee that nearly broke my wrist to get me to desert, but desert more than made up for everything up until that point except perhaps the coked out freak sitting behind me who the guy I've been fucking would not stop talking about.

The Uber home was a fractured experience mainly because in WeHo roads south of Santa Monica Boulevard in no way correspond to where the same road is North of Santa Monica Boulevard. The massive drunk driving protection median they've built along the center of SMB to shield and protect us homosexuals from out own worst tendencies hardly helps in times like these.

Once we found our Uber or our Uber found us we were thoroughly scolded up and down by our driver for not being where we were suppose to be, but once we got inside the car it seemed like all was forgiven. But perhaps not forgotten.

I really only have one birthday a year and I think that is plenty.

And When The Memories Are All That Remain.

There is an absolute shit storm of things that can go wrong on the commute to work. None of them is quite so frustrating as the self-inflicted shit storm that is forgetting your mother fucking book and not realizing it until you are trapped on a bus load (four individuals) of people you want desperately to ignore. That is the misery epic I had to endure this morning and although you would think I could cope with DuoLingo and Angry Birds at my fingertips, I was actually close to tears until I passed another level on Angry Bird and the planned endorphin rush seized me with its soothing compulsive energy.

After that I continued to relentlessly snub that miserable DuoLingo bird and I was quite prepared to stare into dry masonry before I let that patronizing shit back onto my phone, but luckily the train was waiting for me and I was in downtown lickety-split.

It isn't just naked misanthropy, however, that drives me to the printed page. I genuinely enjoy the sense of escape the stories bring to me and although I have moved past Social and Domestic Development in England 1500 - 1800, I am still firmly situated in the distant Elizabethan past. Or not actually, since I left my book and have to face this brutal modern reality unaided and uncomforted by the written word. Just digital avian tauntings and disappointments.

I am actually planning on having a nice dinner tonight to celebrate my birthday. Also a friend's birthday, but since I have picked up the tab the last 17 times we are going to make it mostly my birthday and try a new vegan joint I like. That should soothe the brutal itch that this tarsome day has become.

Behind The Tedium Lies Resentment.

I do not know anyone who relishes a trip to the launderette so that is why when I find that a trip to the accursed domestic purgatory is unavoidable I like to go at 6:00 am on Saturday. Usually I can rely on this city's unrelenting tendency to wake only sometime after 11:00 to get my shit done with a minimum of drama. Such was the hope this Saturday anyway, and like so many hopes, we cling to them when the reality has long since faded like the colors in so many cheap poly-cotton drapes.

This Saturday there were entitled volunteer homeless in the neighborhood launderette. They weren't shell shocked from some recent sectarian conflict, or recently trafficked in a seething underground slave trade (which is where every fish you ever put in your mouth comes from) nor were they recently chucked off a moving train into a place they know little about.

No, any misfortune that has ever kissed these preciously un-housed Beverly Hills rats are the completely self-imposed and indulgent variety, but they remained unfailingly polite if somewhat annoying in their apologies.

'Sorry. I haven't taken a bath. That's why I am bathing in this sink in a launderette on Robertson at six in the morning.' I paraphrase, but words to that effect were indeed spoken.

[Silence]

'Sorry. Guy with the book.' I am not paraphrasing.

You see I am not sitting here at an unchristian hour in a launderette reading a book on domestic and social development in the English Household from the years 1500 - 1800 because I am particularly interested in conversing with another human being let along one so self-consciously tragic, but I let it slide.

The apologies continue despite my repeated and ferocious attempts to ignoring them. They are not the first homeless people I have come across at his particular launderette in Beverly Hills, they are, however, one of the few conscious specimens I have ever come across at his hour, and I am nonetheless skeptical of their continued attempts to draw attention to themselves.

For the most part they mind their own beeswax and let me get on with trying to isolate myself from reality, and this is all good until some genuine street trash walks though the semi-door and some part-time Christian takes it upon themselves to make a project out of it. As I proceed to listen to the human language and logic itself butchered endlessly I decide to forego folding my over-sized linens until a later time and get the Saturday moving elsewhere.

This can all be done before 9:00 am on any given Saturday.

Saint Laurent Is On Sale And We Look To You.

It isn't always demented bellowing hags and drugged-out half-hearted assailants during the morning commute. No, sometimes the daily trek to work just positively drips with boredom, and recently, aside from being mauled by the doors of the train that only thought it was about to depart the station without me and my backpack, it has been tarsome like that.

Although when the commute disappoints my already excitable expectations I always have that minefield of personality disorders and savagely overlooked lifestyle gurus and influencers that pollutes my workplace. Or I should say workplaces. People like me don't do anything unless it can be overdone.

Yesterday, for example, I just traipsed into one of the more uncomfortable situations I have been in in quite a while and I'll be dashed if I wasn't just popping in for some peppermint infused tea and to check some emails.

Some individual in the office is named Siri, not because they are actually named Siri, but because they seem to have the annoying habit of using Google to fact check even the most mildy controversial subjects like the location of the nearest Target or the population of Azerbaijan, and that is what I have taken to call him.

Yesterday Siri spent a particularly uncomfortable amount of time questioning me on topics which were at once direct as well as, I suppose you would have to say, peripheral. I surmise the subject came up a few days ago of where I grew up (Idaho) and Siri, must have overheard, because I have never been assaulted with such a torrent of questions in my life, and I fucking debated in high school and college.

Where in Idaho?
And where is that?
How long did you live there?
Are your parents from there?
Why did they move there?
Why did you leave?

I thought the the poor dear was having some sort of fit or something. I mean you could knock me over the head with a two-by-four and I would never ask so many questions of a single person. It was almost as though he had dropped Molly and I had somehow become transfixed by some crack in the pavement he was convinced he was about to fall into and only continued questioning could save him from the inescapable bonds of demented gravity.

Needles to say I made my excuses and got out of there quick, and without having my tea, and I can't even begin to get into how hot that made me. I tried to get my girl Rashida's attention, but she was lost in her Beats by Dre, and I could have just spit.

I am hoping all of this ends soon, but such is the life that one can never predict.

Don't Let Me Stop You Making A Spectacle of Yourself.

The workplace drama continues to barrel on at a furious pace. I hardly have the chance to look up from my Angry Birds or my memes and some such somebody has lost their shit over something usually the refrigerator or the microwave or more recently the sexual harassment training which is mandatory, but will nonetheless be compensated at, wait for it, minimum wage.

The very moment I read that email with all the inappropriate bits in bold on my sad little cracked iPhone screen I immediately had sugarplum-fairy-like visions dance in my head of the indignant shit show of college-educated-debt-saddled-entitlement rage that was about to wash over my workplace business, and lets just say my imagination always tantalizes, but it rarely disappoints.

There were no fewer than three emails explaining the necessity of all this, every single email highlighting all the inappropriate bits in bold and each explanation predicated upon New York City and our company being headquartered there.

Like an Agent Provocateur I wailed 'New York City!' like I was some ranch hand in a Pace Picante sauce commercial just loud enough to be overheard and to fan the flames of imaginary insult and boy did it work. Before long there will be calls to secede from the union and demands that all things NewYorkian be sent henceforth to Russia.

As I was leaving work I noticed they had strapped the poor receptionist, who remains in all of this an innocent, to some headphones and a computer screen which was obviously transmitting the npow universally reviled and resented sexual harassment training capsule. As if somehow this sad spectacle of forced comradeship would encourage the rest of us to acquiesce to this dystopian Human Resources tyranny. Please. 

Shit hasn't even started to look real.

Stand Here And Watch The Forms Disappear.

I neglect my musings and my meanderings and I am quite certain there is detriment and consequence. Not necessarily for myself, but for posterity rather.

Having spent some considerable amount of time recently in my dear Idaho and its attending thrift stores and notions marts, where I managed to purchase amongst an absolutely stunning clutch of vintage Tupperware, a rather handsome volume of Pepys Diary. It is actually two volumes and quite massive. I also found a stunning secretary, an Edwardian side chair to go with one I had already purchased, an YvesSaintLaurent hand towel in the original Japanese boutique box of all things, but the point is people are ceasing to write things. They are certainly ceasing to write observational prose in a manner that doesn't involve a string of hashtags, memes or imoja. One day, this sad little diary of mine may be one of the few surviving records of life during these turbulent decades of the final utter and total consolidation of corporatist-military-industrial state hegemony, and what a feeble account it shall be if I go on neglecting it in this manner.

And to what end? Why just the other day while I was walking to my bus stop in Beverly Hills I was practically mauled, mauled I say, by a Welsh Corgi intent on protecting what remained of his human's soiled possessions. While I dashed to the side of the curb to avoid this snarling beast I came into clearing or rubbish where I could take in the entire vista of said human who was in that tender hour of 5:00 am completely stark raving nekkid on Robertson for everyone to see. Although there was no one, but the Corgi and me, and the Corgi seriously gave two fucks about his nekkid human.

There is actually a haunting encampment of cardboard, nylon and shopping bag structures nestled along the store fronts which I can't help but think is some type of quiet rebellion of some civil servant somewhere who is trying desperately to have some building project pushed through planning and zoning permissions, but goodness how I let my imagination wander if I let it.

And let it I shall. Or at least try to since I now have unfettered internets and free espresso beverages. The future needs this account of what happens when I go to work at unchristian hours.