The No Toast Zone

Not as bland as toast, but just as spicy

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  • You Need Our Dark

    You Need Our Dark

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    Monday

    I’m not called an asshole on accident.

    It’s because I’m often being one. I can come across as a little…rough.

    -Stop laughing–

    My “assholeness”, you may have figured out by now, concerned reader, comes from a darker place. But that’s just me. Not everyone’s outlooks are made up of cherries and groovy disco, you know.

    That’s just the way it is. Always has been. Always will be.

    Some of you are born with a view of life filled with fairies flying through rainbows handing out pure cocaine.

    Others of us are born simply grateful to have quieted a little of the distracting, blaring, off-tune polka bands in our heads while we scratch at our prickly insulation suits.

    It can make one grouchy. It’s not just because I can hear you when you chew.

    Don’t get me wrong. This is not a feel-sorry-for-me diatribe. I have nothing for anyone to feel sorry for; I’m quite blessed.

    The problem lies with those fairy-type people telling me to turn my, “frown upside down! Life is great up here on top of the rainbow!”

    I don’t have time for your advice when the accordion just hit a flat F on my way to pick up my re-prickled suit.

    Just because we’re frowning doesn’t mean we’re unhappy, We’re just uncomfortable.

    We don’t need your help. We need you to stop.

    There’s a prevailing idea that seeing things on the brighter side is necessary for a full life. We see it. We just can’t find our sunglasses and our eyes are sensitive. Just give us a second—they’re around here somewhere, hold on, found ‘em, cracked? shit!— and we’ll squint, see what you’re so adamantly beaming your huge smiles at and nod, “yes, it is bright.” Now let us Gollum back to our caves; it’s sweaty out here in the sun and we’re getting hives.

    Because, for us, it sounds tiring to be doing all those cartwheels off fluffy clouds and we have other things to do. Your insistence we change is fucking with our schedule.

    And, it’s not as bad as you think. There are benefits to living in the darkness.

    We’re more sensitive. We pick up on the tiny changes in the atmosphere, subtle shifts in the force. We know when there is pain because we feel it, too. When it’s dark much of the time, we must feel, not see, what we’re facing. With all the uncomfortability, polka bands constantly tuning up or finding a comfortable way to sit, we can always sympathize. We can empathize with embarrassment, pain, and awkwardness. There’s little we can’t understand. And if we can’t, we will help you learn to laugh at yourself because we’re usually laughing at ourselves already.

    We’re funny. Because after a while, it just gets funny. It has to be.

    We’re hearty. The caves where we creep are littered with holes in the ground, twisting our ankles; stalagmites rising up to break our toes; stalactites smacking our heads. Having to navigate around with broken toes, itchy suits, and being always a little dizzy, while leading around this fucking ten-piece polka band is tiring. Yet, we carry on. It takes endurance to continue every day; an inherent toughness to reset our own bones in the dark.

    We’re realistic. Because shit happens. A lot. We’ve seen it all.  And we’re never blind to the consequences.

    And why we’re so important to you who live in the clouds.

    Because without us you’d fly into the sun. It would be the brightest yet last thing you ever saw, Icarus…without us tethering you to the ground.

    So, the next time you feel the need to tell one of us to, “turn that frown upside down,” without knowing what we are, rethink. Understand that the polka never stops but we’re ignoring it right now for you. We’re the great listeners who’ll be there for when you need us, anyway, (and maybe a little happy just to sit down for a minute.) Just don’t tell us how to be.

    Honor the darkness that follows us around, wrinkling our brows and breaking our toes, because that’s what makes us who we are…

    And you need us. Be grateful for the balance.

  • Born Without Fucks to Give

    Born Without Fucks to Give

    My hero: Calamity Jane

    Calamity Jane 1901 copy-2

    I’d love to wax rhapsodic over this photo but I can’t improve upon perfection. Calamity was a war-hero, a frontierswoman, a pioneer in a literal and figurative sense.

    A woman actually born with no fucks to give.

    Wikipedia says it better than I could, particularly the last line:

    Martha Jane Canary or Cannary (May 1, 1852 – August 1, 1903), better known as Calamity Jane, was an American frontierswoman and professional scout known for her claims of being an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok and fighting against Indians…[1] She was also known for her habit of wearing men’s attire.[2] It is known that she was illiterate, an itinerant alcoholic, and an occasional prostitute.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamity_Jane

    An “occasional prostitute”. Because, meh. You just have to love a woman who wouldn’t let herself get pigeon-holed.

    There is so much awesomeness in Calamity Jane that I don’t have the time to start. You’ll just have to trust that reading about her is, at once, terrifying, hilarious, triumphant and mind-boggling. And please do read about her. You can’t make this shit up.  (I’m not all that keen on the whole Indian-killing part but it was the misguided-ness of the time; hindsight and all.)

    There are many accounts that say much reputation was fabrication. Hers. Much of what she did, wasn’t. Who cares? We’re still talking about her. I can’t say the same about any of us.

    Again, there is nothing I can say better than what has been said to who she was or to paint a greater character. I’m just sharing an inspiration. An inspired life once you run out of fucks to give.

    CalamityJane

    -No Toast

    P.S. I’ve never considered myself a fan of Westerns or pioneer U.S. history until I read this book. If you’re looking for, by far, the greatest Westerns and in-arguably one of the greatest historical novels ever written, try this:

    deadwood

    Considering how often I’ve recommended this book, I deserve at least a “thank you” from Pete Dexter. Still waiting, Pete.

    The HBO mini-series, Deadwood, was independently researched and not an interpretation of this book, by the way, and also fabulous. The dialogue alone is worth the binge.

    The difference explained here.

  • And Throw In Something Witchy

    And Throw In Something Witchy

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    One of my favorite quotes of all time is one by Charles Manson.

    “Do what you do, do it well…and throw in something witchy.”

    Now, before you get outraged, there’s a reason it’s my favorite and not what you’re probably assuming.

    I don’t like it because it’s creepy/scary and makes me all shivery—it doesn’t. I don’t like it because it’s counterculture and I’m some misinformed hippie—I’m certainly not.

    I like it because it’s rare to sum up someone’s true ethic—a glimpse inside their true self—from one little quote.

    What this quote means, and he himself has admitted to it, is that he didn’t really care why his followers were going to do what they did as long as they did what he said, and did it well. He told them what they wanted to hear to motivate them (aided by a lot of speed and LSD.) He didn’t care about the state of race relations in the U.S. or starting a race war. He just wanted to hurt people as he’d felt he’d been hurt. He wanted to hurt and he wanted to make headlines.

    Manson knew that if Tex Watson was to “throw in something witchy” along with the brutal murders,  the press would go crazy for it. And they did.

    Manson was right but he’s not a genius. He’s an opportunist. He rode a societal wave that handed him vulnerable people who fulfilled what he was lacking and were fulfilled by him what they lacked. It’s mundane.

    Charles Manson wasn’t and isn’t some Svengali. He wasn’t and isn’t some evil, demonic minion of Satan. He’s a man who hated his lot in life; who had a lot of anger towards everyone who got to enjoy a life he never got to enjoy. He is someone who happened to be at a place in geography and time where shoveling out answers to people already grasping for them happened to dovetail sweetly with his one charismatic skill.

    Charles Manson was an happenstance-opportunist who got “lucky”. Lucky for him, not lucky for anyone who happened across his path. Lucky because he got what he wanted his whole life: acknowledgement, out of a life of irrelevance.

    And that’s what he is, a “lucky”, angry, vengeful, opportunistic little man. And that’s all.

    He’s human.

    All of this stems from a preview I just saw of an upcoming ABC show “reminiscing” about the “evil” that is Charles Manson. There is no evil here. It’s human nature, whether you deem him devil or angel.

    Despite the fact that they are gifting this man with what he’d always wanted, and what drove him to do what he did by revitalizing it…they are also perpetuating a myth about human nature that I find more disturbing.

    Again, Charles Manson isn’t a devil. He’s human.

    The myth is the push, the need, to deem people who commit terrible acts as evil or crazy or inhuman…the need to see people who commit horrific acts as anyone other than ourselves. I get it. I understand.

    But to do that is ignorant, lazy, and cowardly.

    Ignorant for not seeing that everyone in every way has influence. One can be a hermit, living in a cave, yet that runoff from their sewage is poisoning the plants, killing the bees that should pollinate the vegetables miles away. Ignorant for hoping that we’re separate entities who hold no responsibility for anyone else’s existence. It is simply not true. Not knowing or acknowledging your influence doesn’t lessen its effect.

    Lazy because shame on you to anyone who thinks, “Hey, not in my yard.” And shame on you again.

    Cowardly because we need to acknowledge that it IS our responsibility. Not addressing what’s causing and perpetuating whatever is your concern, makes you a coward. To think that you or a group of you can’t make a difference, is cowardly. To stand behind the excuse that, “nothing changes” is cowardly.

    (Did you know that writing to your state’s congresspersons about your particular issue sways how they vote about…well, everything? Everyone? Who YOU are to be in this community and your power in it?)

    Write your congressperson

    It’s all of our responsibility to know what we’re doing for all of our fellow humans. Good, bad, and irritating. Because if we don’t, we get Manson.  He didn’t start off bad. He got his shit handed to him hand-over-fist. It made him bitter, angry, violently vengeful.  He was a kid that grew up in a shit-hole existence; uneducated, unguided, and uncared for.

    It’s no excuse but it was all preventable.

    I do blame him. But I also blame us.

    Giving Manson a special on TV reassuring us that he is different, “evil”, “the devil”, and “powerful” is taking away our responsibility for helping to create the monster out of a boy.

    Just because you don’t know anyone on the wrong-side-of-the-tracks doesn’t make you less responsible for the three-strikes law. Ignorance doesn’t validate you for voting in programs that promote incarceration and recidivism instead of rehabilitation. Turning a blind-eye doesn’t excuse your hand in this because you don’t want the icky-ness in your yard.

    Charles Manson is an extreme example of what can happen when you’re born into a world that beats you from day one, where anger is your only connection, where violence is your only outlet.

    He’s not the devil, he’s a possible outcome.

    And it’s all our fault.

  • The New Road

    The New Road

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    I pray my new road to success is a bullet train powered by thinly-veiled resentment and mocking sarcasm because, so far, paying tolls with subservience and break-room-birthday-party-small-talk has gotten me nowhere.

  • No Truer Words…

    No Truer Words…

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  • Planning for the Sort-of-Inevitable

    Keith Morrison

    I’m not saying it will happen, at least not any time soon. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be around to annoy everyone for way, way, WAY too long. Too long for you, too long for me, to the point of, “Seriously! Just shoot it already.”

    But just in case I land tits-up in some colorful, wildly-improbable crime scene, make sure that Keith Morrison is my Dateline narrator. I like them all but only Keith will make my strange demise sound so…intriguing and eerily graceful.

    “Her life, like the melon-baller that ended it, scooped until it clinked into the rind-like bone, now dry and bereft of…sweetness. “

    Or something awesome like that.

    Just be sure you don’t tell him that we already know how ridiculously I end or he won’t do it. And I really need him to do it. I just do.

    Especially, since I don’t know where to find Bill Kurtis.

    Bill Kurtis’ hard-hitting, often disturbingly so, Cold Case Files was the beginning and, in my opinion, the end-all, be-all of crime shows. The original is still the best. Kurtis still remains a master.

    However, nothing but the dulcet tones of Keith’s silky Vincent-Price-esque,  sinister narration of my life and subsequent tragedy could truly honor my Dateline-worthiness.

    So, to whomever is in charge of that, get on it. I only have 30-40 years left to play this out and I got shit to do. Thanks!

    -NTZ

  • Basement Scrote

    Basement Scrote

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    Did you know that it was actually possible to take the high road in social media? It’s true. It happens all the time. As the trolls are out trolling, being assholes, banking those negative karma points, it is possible to actually ignore them and move on.

    Ours has become a very bare-naked, explosively explicit, vulnerable world. Armed with the power of anonymity, it’s far too easy to exploit those brave people who put their bare selves out there, into the vast, angry Internet.

    It takes a strong, self-assured, supported, courageous person to rise above such trollish comments and assume, heroically, a stoic posture. It secures one’s place in righteousness. Integrity is, after all, how we act when no one is looking. What we emulate, what we project, what we teach by our own actions is who we all should aim to be.

    Having said that…fuck that little fucking prick who so rudely commented on my site. Fuck you, you little worthless piece of shit. Your mother is ashamed of you. If your father knows you exist, he wishes that the fifty cents he paid to fuck your mother in the first place included a condom without a hole in it. Keep trolling, Dick. It won’t erase your shame, your tiny dick, or your herpes.

    And take a shower, you fat fuck, I can smell your basement scrote from here.

    I didn’t say I was taking the high road…just that it was possible.

     

  • Add “Pigeon-hole” to My Murder?

    Add “Pigeon-hole” to My Murder?

    It happens. My little girly brain thinks about things; even stuff not relating to ducks. But, as you know, thinking is tough for the penis-less. We’re just silly girls made for pairing and breeding; not thinking or obstinately expressing those thoughts. I mean, what else are we here for?

    Not much else, I can assure you. As a woman, it’s unconscionable to be carrying around an unused uterus like I do. It is simply a defiant protest against nature, God, and true American Values. Shame, shame, shame on us childless, wasteful, worthless meat sacks that take up space and valuable oxygen that should be reserved for the precious children borne from the fertile, silent, white-gowned, obedient ones.

    This EXTREMELY sarcastic conclusion comes from the recent news and made-for-tv movies surrounding the 20th anniversary of the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. It is also sparked by the literal, non-stop loop of Dateline I always have on.

    Watching these shows, I’m inevitably irked and pretty disgusted by the identical refrain parroted by the loved ones of dead or missing women. (I could add, “sad” about their horribly violent deaths but…whatever.)

    But it’s this drivel that gets me all riled up:

    “We’ll never get to see her get married, have children…”

    Not to diminish anyone’s grief. I can try to imagine losing someone to the myriad ways depicted on shows like Dateline. The loss of a loved one is always a heartbreak, violently losing one must be almost unbearable. I get that.

    However, what pisses me off is why are these things, marriage and children, the only markers people use to express their regret of a life cut short? Why do these loved ones exemplify their loss by only using these assumed events?

    I find it extremely condescending. It’s assumptive and belittling to reduce a woman’s greatest future milestones to marriage and family. What if, gee, I don’t know, she never wanted kids? What if she didn’t believe in the institution of marriage? What if her greatest goal in life was to cure cancer, orbit the earth, land on mars, map the sea floor? What if her greatest goal in life was to do what no one ever had before and change the world? What if her assumed milestone was to be an educated and productive member of society?

    Marriage and family shouldn’t be what defines her nor should it be what others assume for her. What if her family stood in praise for her accomplishing things that actually took talent, skill, and determination?

    What if the people who loved her looked forward to her future in terms of mindful accomplishments, such as: graduating from college? Starting her own business? Successfully helping someone in need? Inventing something to transform life as we know it for the better?

    In almost every single show, there is the automatic, robotic regret of not seeing this lost loved one reach these commonalities; of pairing up and breeding. Along with that is the implication that it’s her sole purpose, her greatest gift she can give… and not the pedestrian, biological events they really are.

    Because, guess what? I got news for you out there who think you’re somehow special for having spewed out some resource sponge—you’re not special. There are three billion other people in this world that are born with the same ability. They’re called “every other woman on the planet.”

    –Which leads me to a side rant I must throw in: Motherhood is NOT the hardest job in the world, people. If it were, there’d be 6000 people on the planet instead of the six billion we got now. And, by the way, the goal is to raise a responsible, contributing adult, not the snot-nosed little asshole you post potty pictures of on Facebook every day you leave to television to raise after age five. Oh and this last thing, kids DO have users’ manuals. Check Amazon.com. There are tens of thousands of child-rearing books out there. Pick. One. Up for once and quit using your laziness as an excuse for your bad parenting. But I digress.—

    Now that I’ve successfully alienated most of my readership, I still want to get my point across to you remaining three.

    My point, as is usually clouded by some randomness on my part, is that there needs to be a sea-change in how we view women’s futures and purposes in life. The automatic response should be indicative of the complex people we are/reflective of our unique abilities, hopes, and dreams. Not a response mourning mindless, obsequious duty to shallow, hollow rituals.

    Every little girl should be looking towards her future as, even assuming it to be, filled with trial and hard work in order to accomplish great things for the benefit of society and herself. She should see marriage and having children as an option, a possibility, a choice. If and when she decides it’ll fit into her plans of accomplishing real, valuable things.

    The anticipated future of all women should be looked at in terms that define her as a woman of skill, determination, strength, and acumen. It should automatic and expected. That is what should be common.

    Because we’re all so much more than that. We’re worth so much more than babies and our “big day” when she is passed from one man to another.

    So, when my Dateline airs, because someone has finally had enough of my “thinkin’” and has buried me in a canyon somewhere, please don’t ever express your grief in terms of loss of witnessing my stumble down the aisle or the birth of my cross-eyed mini-me. Mourn what more I could do, that actually define the intelligent, capable, weird, obnoxious person I am now and could be.

    As a little treat for your patience, weary reader, a word of warning: just in case I don’t make it to witness the enlightenment of current attitudes, if anyone does utter the words, “we’ll never see her get married and have kids,” to Keith Morrison regarding my bizarre brake fluid-tainted jello/hockey stick murder, I’m coming to your house and, skillfully, bravely, uniquely…haunting the fuck out of you.

  • Beautiful Day for a Bitchy Rant

    Beautiful Day for a Bitchy Rant

    BoschHere’s a little tip; something you may not know about me. A Pro-Mo tip, if you will. There’s no real reason why you should know this so don’t get all angsty for not knowing something, even though I’m totally appalled at your misstep. How can I count on you, faithful reader, to properly stalk me and compile a truly complete dossier on my extraordinarily exciting life if you have these gaping holes in your research? Huh? Shameful, really.

    I’ll let you slide this time.

    This little tidbit of info is difficult to admit to because of the stigma that surrounds it. I would like to preface this ‘reveal’ by saying, please don’t pigeonhole me by my admitting it. Just because I indulge in this activity doesn’t mean I’m one of them. I promise you, I’m not. Besides, there are functional research reasons for doing it. Kind of like social research to better understand the strange creatures…out there. Outside. You know, public. Ugh. Yuck.

    Anyway, here it is: I watch daytime TV. I don’t just watch daytime TV but am quite religious about catching the 3pm “Dr. Phil “and then almost immediately taking a nap. I can’t help the nap part. Something about wanting to pretend it was all a dream or just being soothed by that holier-than-thou, sanctimonious Texas drawl that puts me to sleep.

    Also, the other reason for watching is that Dr. Phil actually did do me a tremendous amount of good once.

    There was a time that I was subjected to complete bullshit perpetuated by a mannish-looking whore who somehow slimed into my life for 15 years and then left it explosively, leaving a trail of sour-smelling drug store fragrance and half-decomposed roofie-puke. Upset and confused as to why I would allow someone like that to share my same existence instead of stomping on it like the slug she is, Dr. Phil talked me through it. Of course not me specifically but, during his self-congratulatory hour every day, he was able to convince me that there are people out there that just suck.

    Very much unlike Oprah, Dr. Phil doesn’t ask that you, us, we accept that all people may have pasts that cause their evilness so therefore we must empathize with them. He admits that there are some people out there that just suck, who are truly evil, and to just get the fuck away from them. I like that. The “Oprahfication of America is over,” to quote another self-righteous, sanctimonious character.

    (And if you can guess where that quote is from, message me. We can toss quotes to each other from all 20 seasons. I’m not ashamed to admit where it comes from. I’m just curious if anyone else can place it. )

    I find this refreshing. Refreshing because there is something doubly injurious to take away the anger and resentment rightfully owed by justifying another’s evilness through their demons and I want that to stop. All this bypassing of responsibility is making my head spin.

    –There’s a point here, I swear. Somewhere. Cut me some slack, my chick-ness demands that I talk in circles. I can hang with the dudes but I’m still a chick no matter how much better I can swear than they can.–

    What was that point? Oh! Evilness.

    A while ago, I met up with an old “friend”. She was a former BFF from middle school who is one of those evil people. Just like the man-whore who insinuated herself into my pristine adorable existence except meaner. Sure, she has a past and feelings that were maybe stepped on and because of that she could still be a festering, hopefully infected, sore from all of it, but…

    Fuck her for taking it out on me.

    As opposed to the slut, the depth of this canker sore’s evil is much deeper, more sinister, crueler, and, if it weren’t unleashed on me, somewhat admirable in its insidiousness.

    Long story short, –yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up– having reached out to this festering boil to make amends over my completely erroneous impression that I, too, was somehow at fault for our falling out, she took it upon herself to inject her venom in me yet again, almost 30 years later. The conversation we had was over 2 years ago and I’m still pissed. I’m still angry about how she tried to make me feel and now even more pissed that I’m allowing her to rent out my head. You can’t learn that kind of evil skill, it’s born. It’s burst forth like some Bosch-style nightmare creature born out the ass of Satan trailing mung fish minions.

    dog thing bosch

    Not only did this diseased-freak-of-a-human imply that she, and other small people I had known, spent an unusually long period of time discussing the cruelties I had inflicted on them 30 years prior. Sitting around spewing fecal tales about me that were untrue and then had the audacity to tell me about it, it comes to my attention she lied about all of it.

    I don’t know why that lying part galls me so much. I don’t put it past her to do something so intentionally mean because I don’t put it past her to do anything mean. What I didn’t expect was ANYONE doing that. It’s so beyond any consideration, will, or energy of mine to bother.

    Because of my lack of ingenuity, I guess, here it is 30 years later and I’m stupid enough to extend an olive branch so we can both go on about our lives without baggage. Yet she comes slithering in carrying a steam-trunk full of bile and vitriol, holding it out for me to take like a porter on the Titanic. I should’ve known even though I didn’t.

    Back to Dr. Phil…

    One of his go-to’s is this piece of advice that has served me well after the fact. He says, in essence, that as good people, we can’t anticipate or know how really evil people can hurt us, because, as good people, we can’t imagine it. It is beyond our capabilities as decent people to produce imaginations so indecent, much less act on them, that we can’t prepare. It’s like when people assume that getting murdered would be the worst thing that can happen to someone. It’s not. It’s so, very much, not. There are far worse things in this world people do to others that would make them beg for death. You don’t want to know what those things are, just assume you never want that kind of knowledge.

    Knowing this about them, however, doesn’t make you better able to prepare yourself for that kind of evil. You can’t prepare against something you don’t know exists. You can steel yourself. You can move cautiously. You can decide to not assume a polite, politically-correct stance that flies in the face of intuitive caution regardless of how rude it may seem.

    Because it’s better to offend someone when the other outcome is to bleed profusely out of a hole made in your neck by some hate-filled assfuck you crossed paths with, only because you didn’t want to seem rude, despite what your nagging intuition told you. Because being rude is not the worst thing out there.

    Remembering that there are worse things out there, as Dr. Phil has suggested, may be the thing that keeps me in the future from getting too close to the evil I know not of. Being cautious and keeping my guard up could possibly save me from having to write another long-winded rant about some worthless piece-of-shit who insulted me just for fun two years later.

    garden boschDon’t get me wrong. I’m not naive. I know that the scandalous, entirely-surgically-modified-except-for-the-huge-Adam’s-apple-that’s-not-fooing-anyone whore, and the waste-of-oxygen hate-filled throat-aerator, and even this last slimy Hell-baby who’ve skittered their way into my life aren’t the faces of extreme evil. They are blips on the scale. They wouldn’t have, however, wreaked as much damage as they did had I been a little more cautious; had I been a little more conscious; a little less idealistic. Armed now with Dr. Phil’s podunk-idiom-rich advice, I’m praying that I can at least deflect other stupid fucks from getting close enough to reach me. It’s not much but it’s something.

    I’m not 100% sure what my point is, really, now that I have written circles around it. It could be that I have a blog that I can write whatever I want, which today is a vulgar, profanity-filled rant about assholes who deserve to be called assholes. Or it’s that Dr. Phil isn’t as bad as he seems, maybe having a good lesson to share, seeing as his show really has helped me when I needed it. Or that I’d rather no one think I’m one of those people who sit around all day watching crappy TV and comparing it to nothing concrete because I don’t leave the house and by writing something about all of that using an occasional 50 cent word makes me feel justified in my “research” continuing. Who cares. I feel better.

    Total lack of point notwithstanding, it’s time to go. Dr. Phil is airing soon and I need some ice cream and grab a nap, I mean, work.

    And kids? Watch your back.

    –NTZ

     

     

  • A No Toast Zone-type Day in the Park

    A No Toast Zone-type Day in the Park

    Day at the Park

    Sound travels awkwardly here; like being at the beach and not hearing your companion speak but clearly hearing another couple talk a hundred yards away.

    In fact, there are only three other people in my current view on this whole bay right now. I can hear their conversation as if I’m in the boat with them…doing whatever the Hell it is they’re doing in Mission Bay at 8 a.m., Friday morning. It doesn’t look like fishing or skiing but, if they’re anything like me, they’re probably using the boating excuse to drink Bloody Marys.

    They are not alone on the bay, though, because every once in a while I get a glimpse of a ski boat, blasting truly awful country music that warbles in and out of range, towing an overly exuberant skier.

    The lone boat, accompanied by the creepy country music, frames so perfectly the opening scene of any horror movie that I wonder if I am not seeing the overgrowth of San Diego in the background but dark forested trees.

    At least I can sit here. It was a struggle getting to this spot.

    Earlier, quite early this morning, I finally motivated to get out and do something good for myself; get some solitude and peace so I can concentrate on my myriad unavoidables. But like all the luck in my life, I pick the one day to come to this park when it decides to rain. Today. In August. In San Diego.

    I do find an unoccupied group of pavilions to sit under and make my nest only to have a talkative homeless person want to share my pavilion with me, and not any of the three others. My dirty looks convinced him I’m not in the mood for chit-chat with anyone, with what I’m praying is mud up the side of his body, so he finally moved. He sat at one of the other pavilions, slowly unwrapping something in cellophane while staring at me. But it’s better than listening to his conversation.

    The quiet didn’t last long because of the truck that officiously drives three inches behind me, through the pavilions, stopping to discuss some “development” party with a Parks Department’s party guy. Party guy is much too into his upcoming fiesta, being here at 8 a.m. for a party at noon, and the maintenance asshole with the truck is having none of it.

    Neither am I so I move.

    Finding a picnic table with a view was nice until here comes Mr. Maintenance with his rude truck to inexplicably park ten yards from my table, and none of the five others. Then to just sit with his hands in his lap.

    I would think this is sort of funny even though I’m in the world’s worst mood right now.

    That’s until my only pen runs out of ink. Trying to find a comfy place to sit with these frustrations makes me dive further in my already burdensome depression. It’s one Goddamn thing after another, no matter how small. Someone just shoot me.

    Actually, if I’m right about the horror movie this is all-too-closely resembling, a guy with an axe will come bounding up out of the surf. He’ll come screaming up at me, axe raised, take one look at my face and freeze. Witnessing me completely unphased, he’ll tilt his head, drop his axe, frown and maybe whimper a little. Then he’ll turn away, dragging his axe behind him like a dejected Little Leaguer with his baseball bat, and back into the surf.

    In the movie, the camera pans back to the partiers on the lone boat, their bloody, axe-ravaged bodies strewn across the deck as the country music plays a mournful ballad, Doppler-effect lessening it in the distance. The camera pans upward and outward, shrinking the bay into the pupil of the eye of our protagonist, amidst the hustle and bustle of the big city.

    Not being a movie, that didn’t happen. What did happen was Mr. Maintenance emptied the surrounding trash cans with the speed and efficiency of a state worker (as his mocking truck played 70’s pop at increasingly screechy decibels) while staring at my tits.

    And all within the time it takes for the weather to turn from drippy wet to scorchingly hot and me with no pavilion to sit under. I can see that the pavilion tables are dry, cool and empty, though they are being attended to like a hen by Party Guy who is, undoubtedly, getting paid more money to host this tortilla chip and ice cream get-together today than I’ve made in a month.

    With all the pain and suffering going on in this world, and not to mention, though I’d like to not, the awful political happenings in our country, these little inconveniences are, well, little. I know that. But they are my inconveniences and to me they are as tragic and distracting as they are incessant. It’s annoying as fuck. I can’t seem to get my feet under me because of these things.

    For me, right now in life, it feels like I’m scrambling up an incredibly steep cliff-side, slipping on loose shale (or ubiquitous, slimy maintenance workers), only to slide three feet down, further from where I started. An experience I’m literally very familiar with lately…but that’s another post entirely.

    I’ll get my shit together. I will, and these little things will take on the humor and little-ness they fittingly deserve. I would like a break from being me for a minute to do that but I get the feeling that I’m not ever going to, so I will just have to get more resourceful to tilt at the windmills. But, I can do it. I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

    But not right this minute. This minute, I’m getting nasty comments from the couple a hundred yards away, that they think I can’t hear, about how unhealthy my smoking is to them. Since they’re mostly coming from a hugely obese woman in stretchy bike pants, I couldn’t care less about her opinions on health, but I’m going to leave anyway. Without the hope of an axe-wielding savior to kill either one of us, I’m going to burn up in this heat.

    I know of a bar that opens at 6 a.m. around here and, believe it or not, visiting there will probably go a lot smoother than this day at the park has been. The weather is always the same in there.

    Cheers.

    -Mo at the NTZ