It's election day. Ken came by last night and dropped off a lot of stuff so my evening was pretty taken up with putting things away, actually tossing out some, and picking out and cleaning up some things to list.
I put the metal scrap out for the bums, and of course that zombie car that has the trunk held closed by a string or something and generally has shit piled on top came buzzing through. A guy got out, who I'd swear is the same guy who came through with the huge RV and left a literal streak of shit in the parking lot. He got out of the back and grabbed the stuff. Hours later the car buzzed by again, and they put one thing back: a "tower" computer case.
The guy is probably a really bad alcoholic. He's an older (or looks older but I'd say at least 40s) white guy, who looks like the kind of guy who used to have a house in suburbia with a neat lawn and all that. He's probably a really bad alcoholic, or crack addict, or like many zombies, is up for anything he can drink, snort, shoot, etc. So now he's part of the community of bums on "crack alley". Even the minimum on Social Security pays about $900 a month and that's $30 a day to get really drunk on. Cheap 1.75-liter bottles of vodka are still only about $15. A $30 a day cash flow makes one a prince among bums.
I got 10 of the things listed on Ebay, the ones that took the least cleaning and work for the most money. Then did octave exercises while trying to watch YouTube videos and went to bed.
The internet is dying. I'm going to say that right now, right here from the center of Silicon Valley. It's going away. Video would not be called such by Thomas Edison, who actually achieved moving pictures at something like 30 frames per second and synchronized sound. Some sources suck a bit less, like PBS, BBC, and really old scientific lectures. Those are still watchable to a fair extent.
Ebay's slower and buggier, everything's slower and buggier. Email is a lot less dependable. At least there's still the US Postal Service for important communications. This last may not be the case much longer, though, if the fascists pull off their big coup in 2024. Then there will still be letter and small package delivery but it won't be any 50c for a stamp, it will be a few dollars and the workers will be paid minimum wage so don't expect the same high standard as the USPS as we know it now.
Later in the evening, some election results came in. Newsome's solidly in, and Chesa Boudin's out - I even signed the petition months ago and then wondered if it was going to go anywhere. Well, it did, and the hippy's out. Good riddance. More results will be in tomorrow I'm sure. Hopefully Rho Khanna did OK.
I can't believe the hopes I had for this country though. The idea that there were "all these" places I could go where it would be less of a financial squeeze to live, relatively safe and stable and sane .... For instance, when I was living in Colorado Springs, the idea was there was always Denver. Well this is Denver now: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/06/bus-denver-pendemic-violence/
Every place that has a reputation for being what is *considered* good, which is to say mostly middle-class and mostly white, is a shithole now and the whiter the more drug-infested. r/seattlehobos on Reddit gives a pretty good picture of what the Pacific Northwest is all about now but even in the mid-90s when I visited Bellingham, it was a very angry place. Everyone was white and everyone was pissed off. Not enough non-whites to lynch and firebomb, perhaps.
Hawaii's worse too, according to Reddit. My beloved, sleepy old King Street is full of homeless now. At least so they say. Of course if I can avoid the scumbags here I can probably avoid them back home too. My point is that the whole US seems to be rotting and there's nowhere really safe or nice to go. It's just a matter of where you want to find yourself when the ocean turns green and the oxygen gets too low or whatever happens.
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