DSP walking w the Devil

its one of my favorite things to do these days and i even keep up w steps and shit
besides running is more or less out of the question given i had a propensity for falling for as long as i remember
although my rolls and return to my feet could be impressive
have an injured toe which is unfortunate since it tends to make my favorite pastime less enjoyable
oh well must grind through it
woke a little late since i stayed a little late and thought a red bull sounded good besides i get to walk
ah the smell of LA urine in the morning never gets old but as my brain once again acclimates it is truly beautiful
i have a trader joes an ampm and a vons within a block so i set my sights on ampm cause cheap red bull
the birria truck is out early and a huuuuge Mexican is already in the cue fully blocking the sidewalk
manage my way around him as he blankly stares at his phone and am greeted w a smile by the cashier
she doesn't know me yet and when i approach she openly asks "how's everything, is everything ok?"
it was very sweet and it almost seemed as thought she meant it so i'm game
"actually things are pretty far from ok and i can use some help so how much does that cost?"
we share a laugh and her register mate dude clearly doesn't think its funny and is mumbling shit in Spanish
oh well fuck him back to the road and head home w cargo shorts full of bull
huuuuge Mex is still in the same spot and takes one step back this time
damn that birria sure smells good i'll be back to try this truck, sold
as i walk past the park the usual fruit truck guy is setting up for his day but w a twist
i think dude's a Salvi not sure but today has opted for black and white leopard leggings under his shorts...
ok then, he shoots me an over the shoulder glance like wtf you looking at? nothing mate nothing at all
about now i notice a lady w a couple of bags walking parallel across the street from me
how long has she been there and how is she clearly ahead of me with that load?
time to pick up the pace and as i approach the crosswalk in front of my place victory is clearly mine
turns out she is crossing as well so its sort of an uncomfortable face off for a moment
in crossing i try to casually glance and blurt a "como estas" but she was having none of that and ignored me
its one thing to compete but sore losers don't exactly make my day any better oh well
well the red bull tasted good and its time to hit the shower and pick up my sister to visit mom
should dovetail well w dropping off the ex at LAX for her flight to Sri Lanka while she visits
so anyway i'm not sure why i am dropping this here or where it will go or if it will be entertaining for anyone
but i figured it might be a good idea to confirm my sanity or lack thereof given my recent meanderings
any professional advice from fellow wanderers is appreciated and hope it goes somewhere fun
could happen if we leave religion and politics out of it!

 

totally the spirit mate
i'm sure you have other battles/negotiations etc. that others might not understand or shake their heads at
i have this stuff i think is called mustard weed but it turns brown immediately and has little balls of thorns that get in my dogs fur
been battling them for years since stepping on a loose one in my room in the middle of the night really sucks
i think some of these weeds are like roaches and rats and Keef they'll be here long after we're gone but respect the fight!
to the airport and beyond

 

Full marks, brother. Bukowski would be proud.

Speaking of ... I'll post an excerpt from Post Office after this out of respect for Diablo.

Great stuff, my friend.

 

I tried to find the part in Post Office that Diablo's walking thing called to mind. No soap.

But this is also great ... If @BigDaddyKaine has never read Bukowski ... Do so ASAP. If you wait until you're older, it isn't as efficacious.

Here it is. ..

It began as a mistake.

It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up on the hill, who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I had this leather sack on my back and was hiking around at my leisure. What a job, I thought. Soft! They only gave you a block or two and if you managed to finish, the regular carrier would give you another block to carry, or maybe you'd go back in and the soup would give you another, but you just took your time and shoved those Xmas cards in the slots.

I think it was my second day as a Christmas temp that this big woman came out and walked around with me as I delivered letters. What I mean by big was that her ass was big and her tits were big and that she was big in all the right places. She seemed a bit crazy, but I kept looking at her body and I didn't care.

She talked and talked and talked. Then it came out. Her husband was an officer on an island far away and she got lonely, you know, and lived in this little house in back all by herself.

"What little house?" I asked.

She wrote the address on a piece of paper.

"I'm lonely too," I said, "I'll come by and we'll talk tonight."

I was shacked but the shackjob was gone half the time, off somewhere and I was lonely alright. I was lonely for that big ass standing beside me.

"All right," she said, "see you tonight."

She was a good one all right, she was a good lay but like all lays after the third or fourth night I began to lose interest and didn't go back.

But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in their letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes.

So I took the exam, passed it, took the physical, passed it, and there I was—a substitute mail carrier. It began easy. I was sent to West Avon Station and it was just like Christmas except I didn't get laid. Every day I expected to get laid but I didn't. But the soup was easy and I strolled around doing a block here and there. I didn't even have a uniform, just a cap. I wore my regular clothes. The way my shackjob Betty and I drank there was hardly money for clothes.

Then I was transferred to Oakford Station.

The soup was a bullneck named Jonstone. Help was needed there and I understood why. Jonstone liked to wear dark red t-shirts—that meant danger and blood. There were seven subs—Tom Moto, Nick Pelligrini, Herman Stratford, Rosey Anderson, Bobbly Hansen, Harold Wiley and me, Henry Chinaski. Reporting time was 5 AM and I was the only drunk there. I always drank until past midnight, and there we'd sit, at 5AM, waiting to get on the clock, waiting for some regular to call in sick. The regulars usually called in sick when it rained or during a heatwave or the day after a holiday when the mail load was doubled.

There were 40 or 50 routes, maybe more, each case was different, you were never able to learn any of them, you had to get your mail up and ready before 8am for the truck dispatches, and Jonstone would take no excuses. The subs routed their magazines on corners, went without lunch, and died in the streets. Jonstone would have us casing the routes 30 minutes late—spinning in his chair in his red shirt—"Chinaski take route 539!" We'd start a half hour short but were still expected to get the mail up and out and be back on time. And once or twice a week, always beaten, fagged and fucked we had to make the night pickups, and the schedule on the board was impossible—the truck wouldn't go that fast. You had to skip four or five boxes on the first run and the next time around they were stacked with mail and you stank, you ran with sweat jamming it into the sacks. I got laid all right. Jonstone saw to that.

 

You've got the right idea if you're not going to spray it. Get it when it's small and if it heads out haul it out of there. That shit is nasty.

 

speaking of demons and angels i had an amazing day of huge events take place today, a trifecta of awesomeness
first and foremost the love of my life returned from the shit hole and bastion of perversion know as SF
after the dogs greeted her w deep guttural noises i've only heard come from this odd breed of dog i asked her if she enjoyed herself
when she finished gushing about food and friends i asked her if that was before or after the homos started shooting at her
the bf thought it was funny but the kid just gave me an eye roll and disappeared into the house, welcome home!
the second excellent thing was an old friend contacting me after also not appreciating my sense of humor when i posted pictures of the windows from my condo
he's twice the talent i'll ever be and yet the measurements he took were so far off i had to bust his balls
i ended up installing them by myself when he flaked on me several times during the process of order/pick up / installation
nbd since i had offered to let him and his crew install them and i was saving like 3k doing it myself
besides he's always been one of two ways when it comes to jobs, straight up the middle or wet noodle and that's just how it goes
i don't get angry when he goes sideways but one of the windows was off by 5" forcing me to cut stucco and drywall just to get it to fit
the others were also too tight and i fought them all which should never be the way w retrofit as i used to do it for a living
how the job goes depends entirely on the measurements and this was fully fucked
not to mention there was a 12' sliding door i had to wrestle by myself so anyway i was cursing while i worked
so decided to post a few pictures on fb with a headline something to the effect of "don't let your buddy measure your window w a broken tape measure"
that was nearly a year ago and i even though i had reached out w an apology on NYE he held steadfast in his petulance after 40 years of kindred slapdick friendship
so i get a text tonight " i miss you" well of course you do you freaking silly man
talked about moms and we'll see where that goes but i already know for me i was never upset anyway so nothings changed
the third and very excellent thing is the bruja caregiver has finally hung herself in the eyes of the rest of the family and has been vanquished to her own private hell
she also was lacking in humor of any kind but that was never the problem as i could care less and paid no attention to her
until she started insisting mom go to sleep at 9pm every night forcing an end to any home Dodger games for her and i
she literally started yelling during Andersons no hitter at 930 and threatened to walk out!
the next night she actually did walk out and overplayed her hand crying to my brother and sister in law that i was an awful person not following her rules
with no pride she continued to try hanging on and things were going full sideways by the day until today that is
people finally had enough and told her to get out YES
she had fooled everyone and bamboozled w bullshit from the very beginning attempting to solidify herself as irreplaceable
one of the strangest and most uncomfortable situations i've ever found myself in and to say i'm enthused she's gone would be an understatement to good riddance
a true liar and a thief i wish her everything she's worked for going forward
left mom smiling and singing happy days are here again and the Dodgers winning going away again
going to have the other ladies she managed to chase off over for a celebration in the next few days
life's good

 

appreciate the thought but i work alone
can't explain the depths i'm willing to go when you piss me off
most def can't have that shit on film

 

Your goodness & honesty inspire me, brother.

As for brujas ... I says ....

 

still banned from fakebook but manage to communicate in dm
so day before yesterday i noticed a free toy bus being given away on one of the neighborhood sites
was told it had been promised but if that fell through it was mine and yesterday i was told to swing by!
kids at the school love this stuff and it looked brand new
so we talk for a bit and it turns out she's right down the street basically so time for a stroll
as always its going to be contactless pickup left out on the porch and i have just enough time to get there and back in time to watch the game w mom
as i walk down the side opposite the park i am dodging in and out of all sorts of bushes and tree branches making it impossible to take a straight line
it occurs to me the lady from the previous day clearly never had a chance in our race and was likely the reason for her petulance
crossing the main street i just miss the light and as i stand waiting a small crowd crosses to my side w one guy waiting to cross w me
young black guy w a back pack and head phones and he and i are nearly killed as we start to cross by some ditz blonde in a corvette
his pace is same as mine and as we both turn right it becomes clear we will be on the same path for a bit
no big but it ends up w me walking more or less behind him and i know he knows i'm there but this goes like this for a couple of blocks
then he seems to slow down and i pass him on the right and cut left into the neighborhood shortly after
no words spoken just one of those odd moments that timing provides us at times
as i approach the house it starts sinking in that i'm going to be carrying a childs toy back from where i just came from
they have a security camera that announces my arrival to the driveway and i can hear young girls jumping about "mommy he's here! he"s here"
well fuck me this thing is almost 3 ft long and bright pink, something that was not evident in the blurry photo i saw online
so now i realize it's going to look like i'm stealing some little girls barbie bus from her front yard and walking off w it
gotta own it so i do my best to stand upright and look like a respectable toy thief to anyone watching me
one guy comes out of a house and takes off on foot in my direction of course and as we hit the main street i blurt out "not stealing this for what its worth"
he sizes me up looks at the bus and say nothing since he doesn't give a flying fuck
well i'm not doing crosswalks on the way back so i run across the main drag and as i reach the other side regrip this thing and of course it breaks in pieces
gather things up and walking up the main drag i'm now staring directly into the cars trying to figure out what a grown ass man is doing w a barbie bus
did i mention its bright pink?
get home walk in the door and my kid sizes me and the bus up w a quizzical look as i'm dripping sweat
i say "don't ask" and she doesn't
hope the little monsters at the school will enjoy it but more than likely it will die a quick death like every other toy that's ever been brought in
at least it was free

 

I'd rather read these screeds than anything in the Washington Post or the New York Times. Good stuff, Maynard.

 

Leo Tolstoy says wow.

 

lol i have to admit i'm having fun amusing myself
if anyone else smiles at my stupidity that's a plus

 

Having read shitloads of Tolstoi, I'll say that Diablo doesn't put me to sleep & he also gets to the fucking point.

Diablo's narrative ...
Tolstoi's narratives (and every other mongoloid Russian writer)

 

I never meant that they was boring, or sleep inducing.
Not having read every book ever in existence like Finski, I was just a bit surprised to see another guy with Rube sized posts.
I enjoyed them.
Good slice of life stuff...
Oh...and all those who wander are not lost...