Myriad of Musings

Okay: I have discovered how to post to my blog directly from my mobile, although I still don't know how to post a title to the blog from my mobile or how to post a photo from my phone to my mobile, or even if it is possible, which I hope, since I have had the dickens trying to post photos on my blog through public computers.

Anyway, I was reading this story by Ann Rule, who is this really successful true crime author (she has a website named http://www.annrules.com/) and came accross the following really weird sentance:

     "Death notification, especially of the young who have perished as the result of criminal violence, is the hardest assignment any detective or police officer ever has.(my italics)." I should say so. I should think it was virtually impossible to notify anyone who has perished, no matter how young, or whether or not death was the result of violence. Really, Ann: you are an experienced writer. How did this one slip by you. Okay. You had to be there.

Raining all day (I have the day off, so, of course). Wore my rainsuit, but I won't put it back on unless it really starts to come down, because it is unseasonably tepid today, and it doesn't do you any good to keep the rain off if you wind up being soaked with sweat under your rainsuit. Today, I shall replace my brake shoes (round of applause).

CCs has become my morning haunt, which isn't too bad. I see the same crew just about every day and talk to a number of the early birds. There is an interesting collexion of folks: several retired fellows (including an ultraconservative guy who seeks me out with tales of the decay of just about everything and the meager triumphs of the Right), a number of students (high school and college), professional people getting a little work done online before they physically arrive at the office, at least one Fire Chief, several police officers (one of whom, with CSI, even comes in on his day off!), a strange black lady who sleeps in chairs, at least one homeless guy (who attends to his toilette in the spacious and comfortable lavatory), a number of attorneys, the two reallly cute young guys who sit and discuss obscure Biblical references of dubious import (I think they are queer for each other!), one of the mentally challenged courtesy clerks from our store (who comes in with his dad a lot) and assorted various caffeine addicts (CCs is a tower of strength, a haven against Mor(m)ons: never trust a guy who wears sacred underwear!).

Today, I commisserated with a fellow victim of Vista. We both agreed that it was the Worst Operating System in the Known Universe, and probably contains dark matter or neutrinos or something, which makes it act so flaky. Of course, I would kill to have my laptop functional again, even though I may curse its operating system. Everything would be so much easier if I could use my own computer.

So, here I sit, at Middleton Library (God, there are a lot of cute boys at LSU!) trying to work on a terminal with a weird lime-green coloured screen. I will probably kill another hour or so here, working on internet stuff that I could do a lot easier with my own laptop, and skillfully devising alternative methods of getting what I want done while using a public computer. At least it is a form of intellectual exercise that I can pretend actually accomplishes something, since not a lot else seems to be moving very swiftly.

But, I am saving money, and I have been talking to a friend up in Wyoming about moving up there, which I want to do. I really need to get out of here, and if I blow this opportunity, I may die here, which would be disappointing. At least, there is that.

Camp Winge-a-Lot

After many desperate attempts to utilise the computers at the public library to access my blog, and running afoul of Websense, I have taken the extraordinary measure of using the public computers at Middleton Library, at LSU, which give me pretty much unlimited access, so long as I don't attempt to change any settings or meddle in things that I have no business meddling with (and probably don't really need to, anyway). I am still experimenting with some kind of method of uploading photo files to my blog without the use of my interface cable (which is somewhere in my storage unit) or Bluetooth. I have posted some photos to my Sprint photo site, and to Twitpics, but I haven't figured out quite how to transfer the files without saving anything on the computer. I now have a 4.0 GB flash drive, which I will be experimenting with today, hopefully, with some success.

So, about the shelter where I am now housed, which I refer to as "Camp Winge-a-lot", because of the proclivity of many of the residents (or, clients)to winge about just about anything and everything.

A lot of the fellows at the Camp are total losers. Sorry, but this is true. There are some fellows there who have run into a bit of hard luck (like I have)and wound up stuck with no place to go, at least temporarily. Then, there are others who are simply there, i.e., they are staying at the shelter until (a) they get thrown out for being fucked up; (b) miss their curfews (1800 for non-workers, 2000 for those working late); or wear out their welcome. The shelter is supposed to be a temporary fix, in order to allow "clients" some time in which to secure employment and save enough money to move on to more permanent living arrangements. This is my intent. I am decidedly not happy as a resident, and want to get my butt out of the place ASAP.

Residents are awakened from slumber in the spacious dormitory (which holds 30+ men)between 0445 and 0500, by having the lights switched on. I am almost always up at that time, as I have no desire to stay in the shelter any more than I have to. We have to leave by 0600, and are not allowed to return until 1600.

Upon returning to the Camp, "clients" (I love that word: same one they use in the Laughing Academy)must sign in by their bed number. If a client fails to show before the curfew time (either 1800 or 2000), or fail to sign in properly, he loses his bed, and cannot come back to the shelter. After 5 days, if he fails to claim his property and clothing, it is "donated" to the vast pile of used stuff that will eventually be given to someone else who is lacking in stuff.

Upon arrival, one must shower and put on clean clothing. There are some clients who do not have clean clothing (see "stuff", above)and there are also those who apparently would melt like the Wicked Witch of the West if water touched them. I take a shower, shave and put on clean clothes, which are kept in a locker with a sturdy lock on it.

Supper is generally served between 1730 and 1800. For those working late, "late plates" are prepared, which are notoriously skimpy, depending upon who is dishing out the fare. If you are lucky, there is enough to eat. Those who dine at table are usually allowed second helpings on a "first-come, first-served" basis. The food is donated by various groups, many of them religious (mostly Roman Catholic), but some simply families who do this as a public service. Most of these people are salt-of-the-earth types; many bring their kids along, which I think is an excellent way to expose children to the habit of Christian giving.

Clients are responsible for setting the tables and cleaning up after dinner, as well as sweeping and mopping the dormitory and lavatory area. This is supposed to be done on a more or less rotating basis, but, as things generally happen, there are those of us who actually care enough to do chores around the shelter and the majority, who don't. As a result, there are a handful of us who do pretty much all of the daily chores, whilst the rest sit on their fat behinds and watch television, or sleep.

Lights Out is at 2100 (but sometimes a bit later, if the shelter Warden of the evening is remiss in his duties, which can happen). There is no talking or mobile usage allowed in the dormitory, which means that there is talking and mobile usage in the dormitory. As I am not a basketball (which seems to be about the only thing on the television in the "Activity Room") fan, I usually retire to my bed after chores to read, so that I can, for a brief few minutes, forget where I am.

Of course, there are those who prefer the dormitory as a table for open discussion (usually very loud and punctuated with raucous laughter), so it often is not particularly quiet in the dormitories, except when "smoke break" is announced, and the smokers all go outside for a few minutes.

There are generally two topics of conversation which dominate: (a) how much pussy the speaker is getting, in graphic detail and (b) where to go to get free stuff, how to get free stuff and how much free stuff is availible. I thank God for such intellectual diversion.

I shall attempt to post a photo on this blog. The photo is of the sign in the dormitory, which spells out chores to be done each night. I have swepted the floor many a time, but never mopted it. I am not sure exactly how to mopt, but, as soon as I figure out how it should be done, I have no doubt that I shall be mopting away with the best of them.

Farewell from glorious Camp Winge-a-lot. More to follow.

Just Random Shit

Hung out with Travis and Fernando yesterday. We did wash and ate lunch (at FUCKING MACDONALDS!) and just hung for a while. Our cute young friend, H., came by. He is 22 and an avid runner, and had just completed the Crescent City Marathon, down in New Orleans, and was so pumped by the experience that that was all he would talk about, which was okay, because he is such a nice kid, and it made me feel good to see him so excited about his achievement. He is SO CUTE! Oops, shouldn't say that: he has FRIEND status, but he has hot little ass ...

We were talking about Mike the Tiger. For those of you who don't know, Mike the Tiger is an icon in Baton Rouge. He is the living mascot of Louisiana State University, and the current one is Mike VI, mixed Bengal and Siberian tiger, so it's really an university tradition. All of our athletic teams are "Tigers", especially the football (American) team. I swam at LSU, and we were the "Tiger Tankers". So, it's a big thing.

So, we were talking, and H. says it's so cruel to keep a tiger in a cage (actually, he has a really nice little habitat, with stuff to play with and a swimming pool), and I said, well, you really don't know cats, because all they really like to do, besides play and eat, is sleep, and that's what they do most of the time, when they are not destroying everything that you own, and using your DVD collection for skateboards.

So, day before yesterday, I was on my way to work. There is a "bike trail" along Dalrymple, which is on my way, but half of it is so rutted that it is unusable, and, yesterday, there were so many fucking joggers and baby stroller pushers and dog walkers on it that I couldn't use it. So, I'm on the road, on the right side, obeying the FUCKING TRAFFIC LAWS, when a pickup, redneck-equipped, passed me, and the passenger side cretin leaned out the window and screamed "BIKE LANE", to which I answered "ASS HOLE", and gave him my best three-fingered salute.

Which reminds me of something that happened years ago, when I was on my way home, around midnight, on my bike, on Perkins Road. Another pickup, with three stupid shitkickers in it, passed me, close, blew the horn and screamed obscenities at me. I yelled "fuck you", and they actually turned around and came back for another pass, so I got up off the road, laid my bike down, and put my U-lock (a really heavy thing to lock a bike up with) in my hand, in case they got out of the truck.They didn't. One of them threw a beer bottle at me, but it missed. Then they drove away.

Well, I got up to the next major intersection and, lo and behold, the same truck is parked outside of a popular bar. So, I got the multitool out of my tool kit and cut all four valve stems off of the tyres. This was a Saturday, and the truck was still there on Tuesday. Every time I drove by, another wheel was up on a cinderblock. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and it was a chilly night.

So be nice to cyclists: we don't fuck with you, pollute the environment or drive up oil prices. Plus: you may get away with it today, but may God help you if I finally catch up to you. And, I mean that.

Mortality

Kind of sad, really. Right down the street from where I live, on the 17th, a 22-year old LSU student died in an apartment of Carbon Monoxide poisoning. He was found by EMS personnel that afternoon, along with a 22-year old female, who was unconscious, but survived. They were in an unventilated apartment with an old space heater, the kind that I have in my apartment. It wasn't mentioned whether or not he had a CO detector, but his parents handed out CO detectors to students in the neighbourhood yesterday. There are two funeral wreaths out in front of the place. I had passed them every day, without noticing (in my defense, I spend more time watching traffic so I don't get splattered than looking at scenery).

The creepy thing is that I was going to rent the same apartment before I rented the one I am living in now. It makes you think. Of course, I have the same kind of old heater that is in most of these buildings, but I do have a CO detector (even if I don't know if it works or not). And, another thing: I don't trust the detector any more than I do the heater: I just don't use the heater at night, when I go to bed. It's on now, but I will turn it off before I go to sleep, because I am really counting on waking up tomorrow. Of course, so was he, and, when you're 22, you are incapable of dying.

I suppose he grew up in a nice suburban home, with central heat, not like I did, with ancient gas furnaces that had to be cleaned and maintained and properly vented. So, no-one probably ever warned him about the dangers of an open gas furnace, which is a pity.

I am sure that there will be repercussions, as well. I rent from the same landlord who owns that building, and, when I moved in, I was given a checklist which covered the CO detector, the fire extinguisher and the smoke detector (which goes off whenever I light the furnace or cook anything, so I take the battery out of it unless I am going to bed). There is a good chance that there was a CO detector at the apartment, but I don't know, and I don't know if it worked or not, which really doesn't change things because the boy's parents have just lost heir son, and they are probably pissed of, just at everything in general, and hurt, and there is bound to be an investigation, and maybe a lawsuit over this, even if it is just simply a case of accidental death.

At any rate, the CO detector here (which may or may not work) is plugged in, I am turning off the heat before I go to bed, and I have set the cats on firewatch, with orders to wake me if anything happens. That's about all I can do: that and hope I wake up in the morning, because I am planning to wash clothes and hang out with friends tomorrow, since I have Sunday off, the first one in six weeks, and I would rather spend it alive than dead.

Cat-Tastrophe

My friend K., whom I work with, is a really great guy. He's 20, and cute and (unfortunately) very straight, and he was one of a few people who actually raised a hand to help me when I was homeless. He lives in a two-bedroom walk-up in Tigerland, a huge ghetto of student apartments North of LSU campus, along Nicholson Dr. Since has been living there (which is about 7 months) he has gone through a veritable menagerie of pets, including two dogs, two cats and a snake.

The story of the snake is a sad and convoluted one. K. kept his snake in a large aquarium tank with some bedding stuff and an electric rock in it, to keep him warm, since snakes are cold-blooded and require external heat in order to function. He initially told me that the two cats had killed the snake. I said I really didn't see how they could have, since they are small cats (about 6 months old) and the snake was probably more capable of killing them. Well, he said, they didn't actually kill the snake but were complicit in its demise.

It seemed that his original dog, which was large, had torn the blinds down in the living room, and that K. had kind of put them back up. Exit dog #1, since his roommate had recently acquired a Pit Bull (in an apartment?), and it was getting crowded, with two dogs, a snake and two cats. Apparently, the cats, eager to look out the window (which cats love to do), pulled the already damaged blinds down, which stuck the aquarium, breaking the top to it.

"So," I asked. "The blinds fell on the snake, killing it?"

"Not exactly," he said. "I had to put him in a smaller aquarium, until I got a new top for the big one, and I didn't put his rock in it, and he froze to death."

"So," I asked. "What you're saying is that you neglected to provide your snake with a suitable heat source and it snuffed it as a result?"

"Well, yeah," he admitted.

What is behind all this is that he had been twisting my arm for an entire week, begging me to take his two cats (a matched set, black with white markings), as he had recently acquired yet another large dog, this time a Husky, a breed well-suited by it's diminutive size for apartment life (what is it with straight boys and immense dogs in small flats?), and wanted to get rid of the cats, only K., being very soft-hearted, didn't want to just give them away to just anyone, or break them up, as they were happy together. Hence his campaign to get me to take them.

Now, remember, I have just been in my new apartment for a month, having spent six months on the streets, homeless, and I barely have furniture yet. I told him that I could not possibly take on two young, fully intact cats, as two would very quickly become six or seven, and I would be up to my ass in cats, and have to find friends to foist them off on, as well. He thought about this and told me that he would talk to his girlfriend, who knew a place that would neuter pets cheaply, and get back to me.

So, the other night, he texted me to tell me that, if I took his two cats, he would pay for their medical expenses and throw in a bag of cat food, litter, and their litter box and food bowls. I said, okay: if he would do all that, I would take them. He showed up at work the next night with cats and cat stuff, bought an huge bag of cat food and two containers of litter, and we installed both cats that evening, which was two nights ago.

So now, I have two cats, whom I have named Yin and Yang. They have settled in famously and made themselves quite to home. Today was my day off, and they woke me about 7 AM, chasing each other all around the place (even across me) for about two hours before eating breakfast and settling back to sleep on my chair. They are very affectionate and compete for lap space (even though Yang seems to prefer the back of my ugly green chair, from where he can look out of the window. They are currently asleep in the closet, on top of my storage bin in which I keep my clothes. I am not really unhappy to have cats, since I have kept them all of my life. Besides, there is alwys someone here when I come home, which is nice. Oh, well: here we go again.

Unexpected Company

Got off work around 9:30 and went back to the PH. Travis and Fernando were at the game, which LSU ended up winning 28-10. Bought a couple of cheap movies at work, and watched part of one, the remake of Mysterious Island, with Patrick Stewart, and ate part of an MRE, then went to sleep, around 11:00. Around 1:30 or so, Travis came and woke me up. Fernando was asleep, and he wasn't sleepy, so I went over there and we just sat up and talked for a while. Went back to sleep about 3:30. Since the clocks were set back last night, I figured I could get some extra sleep, but no suck luck.

About 6:30, I was waked up by this black guy who came in. He was carrying food he had bought at the Circle K on the corner. His name is Chris, and he has spent the night at the PH before. He asked if he could share the place for the night, and I said I didn't care (after all, it's not my place). He told me that we "had to set some ground rules", because he wasn't "into that homosexual shit", and then told me he was going to lie down. I just rolled up my sleeping bag and told him he could have the place for the morning, that I usually left early, anyway. Just as I left, he told me he had an idea that could make us both rich. I said, "great" and left.

Passed by Highland Coffees, but they weren't open yet, so I went over to CC's, which opens at 7:00. I was puzzled that they weren't open, and then I remembered that the clocks had been set back, and it wasn't 7:00 yet. So, I went by the store for a little while and read Rolling Stone, an article about David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide a while back. I haven't read any of his work, but I guess I will, now: I always try to read dead people. Then, I went back to CC's, where I ordered coffee and a bagel, since it looks like I won't be getting any more sleep this morning.

This guy Chris presents a problem which I had anticipated the possibility of before. I always figured that somebody else knew about the place, and kind of half-expected to run into another homeless person, sooner or later. This is the most comfortable place I have found, and I don't really want to be forced to find another place. This could be a problem. I don't really want to share my little patch of heaven with someone else. I stashed my sleeping bag there: I hope he doesn't decide to appropriate it. Oh, well: I guess I will find out tonight. I hope he finds somewhere else to go.

So, I guess I will hang out here and write and blog for a while, at least until Travis and Fernando get up, when I can go by there and take a shower, and we can maybe go get some lunch. Tomorrow, I will try to find something better. One of my co-workers gave me a number to call for United Way. She does volunteer work for them and said that they provide housing for people. Maybe I can find temporary housing through them. I am tired of the PH, anyway: I just don't like not having that option, in case I can't find anything else.

God: does my life suck, or what?