AUGUST 6, 2017
TRUTH IN THE POST TRUTH ERA
[IMAGE-coffeecup]
So anyway. Everyone is breathing some relief after the end of the recent heat wave. The Island remained relatively cool, as did other foggy locations along the Bay, but just a mile inland saw the mercury busting out the tops of the thermometer tubes.
business in a state of ineffectual chaos
The President of the Bums in Sacto has been stirring up the muddy delta waters of politics in his inimitable blustering style. People had hoped he would clean up the act for all the bums in the Golden State by putting an end to loitering, sleeping in bus shelters, obnoxious panhandling, public defecation, and the usual bums' noisy rowdiness, but after 100 days it looks pretty clear that, if not business as usual, it will be business in a state of ineffectual chaos.
Rump campaigned on simple promised lies, which is pretty much what politicians always do, so don't get your panties in a twist. He promised to have the fen over there by the American River drained entirely, but just how a bum who had never done a lick's worth of work other than preside over a Motel that rented rooms by the hour would drain a swamp is anyone's guess. He also promised to build a wall completely encircling Sacto and this wall would keep out Daesh poodles, which we understand to be a dangerous breed of canine that is born ludicrously insane.
No one knows why poodles persist
No one knows why poodles persist despite the best efforts to obliterate the species, but like the SUV Eradication Project, progress never seems to go anywhere, probably because there are crazy people who love poodles and foolish people who love SUVs so go figure. People do love their pets, often more than other human beings, and people who own pets are the champions of self-deception in the entire world. Same goes for people and cars even though the pernicious things kill more Americans each year than have all the armies of radical Islam combined. That is just the way it is and there is nothing anyone can ever do about it and Rump's plan to have the Wall paid for by dog license fees seems about as likely to lift off the ground as a concrete balloon.
This seems unlikely to be recalled by the Rumpers, people who enthusiastically endorse President Rump despite all common sense. Rump is always causing a new scandal to occupy the tabloids, whom he dearly loves for all their foibles.
Just the other day Rump fired chief advisor Scaramouche for mentioning that Rump's toupee was on backwards. Scaramouche was only trying to help, but nevermind.
"MOOCHY, YOU'RE FIRED!"
"But boss you only hired me ten minutes ago!"
"YOU GOT NOTHING TO SAY! YOU'RE A LOSER, MOOCHY! LOSER! GET OUTTA HERE LOSER!"
Which is a fine thing to say after the Bum Health Plan that promised a gallon of Tokay in every squat tanked big time.
This is not to say that Rump still does not harbor big plans. He still wants to replace medical clinics with Koban kiosks outfitted with beds and run by convicted prostitutes wearing cute nurses uniforms. People with real medical problems are supposed to have money -- this is America after all -- so they can just go to one of the remaining hospitals and pay for whatever with vouchers tied to income. The more a person makes, the bigger the voucher. The people with lower income will simply die away.
"TAKE THE LADIES OFF THE STREETS AND PUT THEM ON THEIR BACKS WHERE THEY BELONG!" Rump said, despite more than a little criticism. "I DON'T CARE WHAT THE NASTY MEDIA SAYS! THIS IS GOING TO BE BIGLY!"
One thing is for sure; Rump has been the greatest boon to comedians since Richard Nixon. Comedians just love the Rump. In fact most people know that a lot of clowns voted for the Rump in the general election. It was not the Russians that turned things around -- it was the three Stooges.
"GOD I LOOOOOVE THE PRESS!" Said Rump. "THEY ARE SO GULLIBLE AND STUPID! HEY GUYS!" Rump said, turning to his remaining advisors. "LETS GO POOP IN THE GOVERNOR'S POND SO THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT AND FORGET THE ECONOMIC REPORT!"
And off went the Administration, doing the business in the People's reserve.
Closer to home, life on the Island continues as always or at least as we are accustomed to these new Realities. Marsha and Martini and Suan all had to work fore and aft of Independence day, which kiboshed long weekend ideas and resulted in the one day off being a day to get chores done, meaning that nobody had any vacation since Memorial Day and there would be the yawning gulf of workdays until Labor Day, which had snuggled up against the weekend to make it worth something at least.
Nevertheless Summer does have consequences. This was the day Martini was fated to fall in love against his will. Martini stumbled into the Slut Hut Javahouse on Park Street in search of something strong to remove the effects of the 99 cent jug wine he had enjoyed at the time with Pahrump and Snuffles on the Strand Friday evening. Love is no more a voluntary feeling than those engendered by too much 99 cent wine and the long term effects are very similar.
"What'll ya have? Coffee, tea or me?" asked Slut Barista #2 tiredly.
"You always say that," Martini said.
"I have to," said the Barista #2, whose real name was Susan. "It's the Slut Hut script. Now waddyoo want?"
"I'll have the Mocha Java Espresso Latte Enormee," said Martini. "Skip the fig garnish and make it a double Grandee."
"Coming right up faster than a blowjob," Barista #2 said.
While waiting for his beverage Martini looked around at the various clients, each immersed in some form of electronics save for a woman with bright red hair cut close to frame an angular face supporting the thickest hornrim spectacles Martini had ever seen. Her eyes looked enlarged behind the cokebottle lenses and she had a newspaper on the table in front of her.
"Whaddya lookin' at?"
Martini flinched. Her eyes were like two giant blue planets and her voice was reminiscent of #80 grit sandpaper.
"Uh, sorry. Just waiting for my drink."
"Yeah sure. Just waiting."
"And you are the only person in the room without a computer or iPhone of some sort."
"I HATE computers!" the woman said vehemently.
"Okay," said Martini. "You a librarian or something?"
"Christ on a bike, everybody assumes all this crap because I am a girl."
"Don't take offence; you just said you hate computers. So what do you do?"
"I work for an MSP called TechnoDweebs. I am an engineer."
"Ah, doesn't that involve computers a little bit? I mean you gotta be smart or something like that."
"Of course I am smart. Can't a girl be smart as a guy? I was a math major for chrissakes. I just get no relief in this sodding world."
"I can see you are smart, but why are you working with computers if you don't like them? Do they pay you well?"
I am a girl-person and that lowers the payrate
"Of course not. I work for an MSP; they are all cheap as shit. The owners make the money and we get paid crapola; that is the system in America today. In addition I am a girl-person and that lowers the payrate automatically. So are you raking in the big bucks to pay your highfalutin mortgage?"
"No. I work as a sawboy in a factory. And I live in a squat with fifteen other losers like myself," Martini said honestly. "My name is Martini."
"Hey Sawboy, here's your Mocha Enormee. That'll be nine dollars."
"Christ in a kayak, you sprinkle gold dust on it or something," Martini said. He paid for his drink arduously with crumpled dollars pulled from his dirty cutoff jean pockets. He held his cup and stood by her table. "Mind if I sit here?"
"If you have to and there is nowhere else," said the redhaired girl with the glasses.
"Well dude," Martini said. "Sorry about your job and your feelings about it. It's not like being a sawboy is a career position. What is your name?"
"My name is Tandy. What is a sawboy?" asked the girl.
Martini explained about how the long alloy ingots arrived by truck and had to be cut by hand into blocks that got made into valves that in turn got inserted into robotic systems that made IC chips which found themselves soldered onto boards that became Tandy's hated computers.
"So you cut metal logs all day long?"
"Sometimes I am a dipper. I put on a PVC suit and dip baskets into hot sulphuric acid to clean off impurities from the cut alloy blocks."
They were silent for a while. Then Martini said, "We should do something together."
"I find you physically repulsive," Tandy said.
Martini did not pause a single heartbeat. "That is generally how all long-term relationships end up."
Susan, the Barista #2, watched through the big windows as Lionel strode past clutching a bouquet of brillian gladiolas, a gift for his decades-long unrequited love Jackie at Jaqueline's Salon.
"There must be something in the air what with the upcoming solar eclipse and the moon," #2 said to Barista #6.
Tandy paused a long time, looking at Martini with cokebottle eyes. "You are right. It has always been like that. Let's go see a movie. And afterwards exchange bodily fluids."
"Ok," Martini said.
The two went out and Baristas #2 and #6 stared at them as they went. "It is the moon. Definitely it is the moon," Barista #6 said.
the Angry Elf gang ignited cars
After a while the sun finished its slow descent beyond the Golden Gate, allowing the stars to emerge from the fog that advanced across the Bay. Soldiers in the Angry Elf gang ignited cars here and there on the Island as part of their terror campaign and the fires blazed in the dark night beneath the complacent moon looking down with equanimity.
Where the Snoffish Valley Road met the Shoreline Drive, a few hestitant deer appeared out of the belching mist, their eyes glowing wierdly in the half light. Something made a sound and the deer turned and bolted back into the darkness of that stygian mouth.
From from far across the water, the night train wailed from beneath the light-studded gantries of the Port of Oaktown, keening across the waves of the estuary, the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats through the cracked brick of the Cannery and its weedy railbed, crying over the dripping basketball hoops of Littlejohn Park and dying between the Edwardian house-rows as the locomotive click-clacked in front of the shuttered doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge of town past the Ohlone burial mounds to mysterious parts unknown.
