I woke up earlier than usual, and it was still early when I pushed the cart to Telegraph. Only two other vendors were set up on my designated block. One was a guy I don’t particularly like, and across the street was Jasper, a guy I particularly dislike.
From Pathetic Life #23 Friday, April 26, 1996
Sure, I could’ve claimed a space all by myself, and would’ve liked to, but a man’s gotta pee sometimes, so vendors need neighbors. And what the hell, it’s time Jasper knows I’m on the Ave to stay, so I parked my cart right beside his table and started unpacking.
“Oh, Doug,” he said politely, “good morning, but — could you please set up a little further down the sidewalk? I’m saving this space for a buddy.” Fuck off, I wanted to say, but what he’d asked was within the perimeters of routine vendor etiquette. Heck, Brenda saves a space for me some Saturdays. So I acquiesced, leaving fifteen feet of open sidewalk between me and Jasper the ass.
When his “buddy” showed up a little later, it was Bo, one of the few vendors I actually like, so that worked out well. I got to work beside a semi-friend, but also I got to wondering why a decent guy like Bo would be friends with Jasper. It’s childish and ridiculous, but it kinda hurt my feelings. Not counting cops, Jasper is the A#1 Jackass of Telegraph Ave, but he’s pals with someone I’m pals with?
Mid-afternoon, Umberto stopped by and said hello. He’s another vendor I like, and we talked for a minute. Then he said hello to fuckin’ Jasper, and they talked cordially for several minutes. And that bugged me too.
These are of course the very slightest of slights, but people I like should hate the people I hate, shouldn’t they?
Ah, grumble grumble, mumble mumble. Not even 40, I’m too young to be a curmudgeon, but it’s my destiny and I’m working on it.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jacque came ’round, handing out cigars. His wife had the baby. Congratulations, it’s a boy, or a girl. I don’t remember, and I don’t smoke so I declined the cigar. Shook his hand, though, and of course Jacque invited me to their house again.
“Soon,” I said, and smiled and meant it, but now it’s six hours later and I’m telling you about it here at my typewriter, and really in no hurry for that “soon” to happen.
♦ ♦ ♦
Because I’d gotten up early, I fell asleep early, until a little after midnight, when a fierce pounding came from the exposed pipe leading to the radiator in my room. Klunk, bang bang, etc, on and on, as if someone somewhere in the building was pounding the pipe for the hell of it.
The hell of it continued, so I put on pants and followed the banging, down the stairs, down a hallway on the floor below me, looking for the source, and of course, that’s when the noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The pipes were quiet for the rest of the night.
When I came back upstairs and toward my room, I met my neighbor from across the hall, room 404. White guy, about my age, needing a shave and holding a beer and obviously fresh woke up against his will, just like me. It was 12:30 in the morning and neither of us much wanted to talk, but we had the annoyance of the noise in common, so we talked about that for a minute.
Didn’t catch the guy’s name, but he seemed like a typical schmuck, and I’m sure I did, too.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
Trump & the Republicans just knew Puerto Rico’s voting machines had been hacked, so when the investigation turned up nothing, the White House accused the firm it hired to conduct the review of being part of the “deep state.” Everyone who doesn’t say it’s a fix is in on the fix, see.
Last night, some goofball with a gun allegedly made the White House Correspondents Dinner briefly interesting. I’ll include no link, as I’ve yet to see any coverage worth reading, and any journalist who hobnobs at such events can be ignored at no peril to being well-informed.
Just a brief thought, though, before turning to news that matters: Please don’t assassinate Donald Trump. Srsly. He’s the worst president in the history of presidents, enthusiastically against America and democracy, killing people for fun and for no reason at all, taking America and the world full-speed-ahead into the icebergs, but sweet jeebers, if he’s “martyred” everything will only get worse.
Excerpt: Distinct from institutions that emphasize the military and diplomatic history of World War II, resistance museums focus on the home front, and how — by smuggling weapons, printing underground newspapers, ferrying intelligence, conducting sabotage, or sometimes just wearing distinctive hats — regular citizens opposed and undermined the Nazi effort.
Excerpt: Microsoft and other US tech companies successfully lobbied the EU to hide the environmental toll of their datacentres, an investigation has found, with demands to block a database of green metrics from public view written almost word for word into EU rules.
Excerpt: The rich don’t play by the rules. We live in a society where there are billionaires; where the top 1 percent holds 32 percent of the net worth and the bottom 50 percent holds 2.5 percent. So, at some point, if the laws don’t feel moral, do you start to question your own sense of having to abide by them?
Excerpt: The following Monday, I handed in my resignation. I felt immediate relief. I had nothing else lined up, but I knew I needed to go. I’m unsure when (or if) I’ll return to full-time tech work.
Excerpt: Benches, like other public amenities, are places where optimistic visions of civic life meet messier realities. They’re sites of leisure and contestation that invite a range of constituencies with vastly differing needs and desires. Office workers may lunch and seniors may rest, but teenagers might socialize at decibels unwelcome by their elders. Benches beckon skateboarders trying to perfect their nosegrinds, and men who sip drinks concealed in paper bags. Unlike parks or homeless shelters, they’re small and relatively inexpensive interventions, six-foot-long microcosms of a far broader debate over whom our cities should be structured to serve and how best to do so. To remove benches, or to curate who gets to sit, is to abandon the work of defining a civic ideal and determining, together, how to live up to it. When seating disappears, our relationship with public space becomes more grudging and utilitarian. Benches are symbols of hospitality, an invitation to participate in the civic realm.
Excerpt: The opening moments of the 1982 film Blade Runner introduce viewers to a world of artificially intelligent beings that are “virtually identical” to humans. To tell man from machine, people rely on something called the Voight-Kampff test, which is a little like a polygraph; robot irises exhibit subtle tells when prompted. If you’re dealing with a robot, you’ll know by the eyes.
If Sam Altman has his way, this could be sort of how it works in real life. Last week, he announced an expansion of the verification service World ID, created by a start-up called Tools for Humanity. Altman co-founded the company in 2019, the same year he became CEO of OpenAI. Onstage last Friday, he described the product as a way to certify personhood in a digital landscape rife with bots, deepfakes, phishers, and other sorts of impostors. Think of it as an evolution of CAPTCHA, the security program used to identify bots and prevent attacks on websites. To verify your humanness and secure a World ID, you must stare into a white, frosted orb and allow the company to take pictures of your face and eyeballs.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Joey Jo Jo & John the Basketemeritus, Jeff Meyer, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn’t always shitty.
News always and only from reliable sources, and I decide what’s reliable — no right-wing bullshit, no Substack because fuck Nazis, and no RawStory, Newsweek, or other clickbait sites. Written news is preferred; video links will be rare, and damned near never to videos where the reporter sits, stands, or strolls in front of a camera — that’s show biz, not news.
If you’re blocked from reading anything linked above, please let me know, and I’ll reply with the article’s complete text, via my computer’s fine ad-blockers and paywall-vaulters.
On my way to the maildrop, without even expecting it, I found myself walking past a convenience store where one angry afternoon a few years ago, I’d shouted at the owner.
There was only me and one other customer in the store, and I don’t ever remember what I was buying that day, only that I didn’t buy it, because the jerk wouldn’t get off the phone despite me and the aforementioned one other customer standing at the register three from from him, while he talked on the phone.
I yelled at the guy, who must’ve been the owner — Indian-American, about 50 — “Hang up the damn phone and run your store.” So of course, he hung up the phone, but told me to leave, and we yelled at each other for a few minutes. The last thing I screamed as I walked away was, “Remember me when you’re bankrupt!”
Well, today the store was all boarded up, with a sign that says, “For rent.” I laughed when I saw it, and laughed again typing it. I have some complaints about capitalism, but sometimes it does what it’s supposed to do. Treat your customers crappy, and eventually you run out of customers.
♦ ♦ ♦
Now I’m at home, going through the mail, and treating my customers crappy, by generally forgoing the expected personal note when people send three bucks.
When I send for other people’s zines, almost always there’s at least a post-it note inside that says “Thanks,” and sometimes there’s even a few sentences, handwritten. Douggie don’t do that. But I do get the issues into the mail soon as your cash is in my wallet.
♦ ♦ ♦
No reply from Corina, the woman I’d asked for a date via the mail…
♦ ♦ ♦
Paid next week’s rent entirely with one-dollar bills that came in the mail, three dollars per envelope. Guess I’m a professional writer — it literally pays the rent.
Mr Patel looked bemused as he counted all the ones, and through his Indian accent he asked, “You have a paper route?”
I smiled and said, “No, man, I don’t have a paper route,” but said nothing more, because it always takes five minutes to explain the concept of zines. Factor in the language barrier and it would take even longer, and anyway, I don’t want Mr Patel reading Pathetic Life.
Four dollar bills remain in my wallet, to last until payday for the fish work, which is Saturday. So, no movies tonight, that’s for sure.
♦ ♦ ♦
Worked on the zine for a few hours, editing out some of the many, many boring bits, and writing up some yesterdays that had been just scribbled notes. When I looked at what I’d written, though, jeez it stank. This isn’t my day for writing, my writing told me, so an hour past sunset I jiggled and bounced my belly down four flights of stairs, maybe to buy a newspaper or something, but really with no particular purpose at all, like my life.
Around the corner, in the shadows between street lights, a mildewed old man sat on a milk crate, playing a guitar. His “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” was invigorating and on-key, so I listened, pretending to be transfixed by something in a shop window. He finished with a flourish, then shot a smile at me, knowing I’d liked it even if I couldn’t afford to clink into his can.
I semi-smiled back, and he started his next number. It was something lyricless, maybe his own composition, and it was beautiful, the kind of melody you hear once but carry in your head for hours afterwards. When he finished and smiled at me again, I waved and walked off into the night, whistling the tune he’d just played.
♦ ♦ ♦
A block away, an idea popped into my head, and I stopped, leaned on a darkened storefront, and wrote it into my notebook. (Always carry a notebook, kids.) Then came a second idea and a third, and I stood there scribbling furiously.
A giant electric bus swerved toward me, startling me, and I dropped my pen on the sidewalk. The bus’s door opened, and in slow motion I realized I’d been standing at a bus stop, taking notes.
22 Fillmore, eh? The door was open, and I have a pre-paid transit pass, so I bent over and picked up my pen, climbed three steps, flashed the pass at the driver, and stood in the aisle alongside dozens of other cranky humanoids on a chilly evening, as the trolley shook its way westward on 16th.
My part of the Mission is ground zero slumland — ugly hookers, cheap and toxic drugs, stolen bus transfers for sale at the corner, etc. But as the bus shook rattled and rolled along, the neighborhood gentrified itself, with more sports bars and middle-class housing, fewer bodegas and laundromats and tennis shoes dangling from high wires. By the time we’d turned onto Church Street, Aardvark Books was the only oasis in a desert of dullness.
Creaking and wobbling, the bus turned onto Fillmore Street, and at every stop, it seemed like one or two people stepped off but three or four stepped on. With me hanging onto the rail above my head, some unfortunate woman had her face basically in my arm pit. Slowly we climbed up and over Nowhere Hill, herky-jerky all the way.
Eventually the bus began emptying, and I was able to sit down and look out the window. We rolled past a few movie theaters, too many upscale eateries and boutiques, and several extravagant churches where Jesus could’ve lost his temper and tossed people out all over again.
In Pacific Heights, even the Walgreens looks swanky and unwelcoming to the likes of me. Then left, right, right, left, onto Chestnut Street and the Marina.
It’s sort of a snooty area, and I rarely get the chance to snoot, so I stepped off the bus. A panhandler was waiting, hand literally out, but he got nada from me.
Closer to the water, there was a chilly breeze, and me and a bum were the only ones not wearing stylish sweaters. Everyone else had the look of bank managers, sons and daughters of the uppercrust — people of undeniable importance, at least to each other. Walking past busy sidewalk cafes and small crowds of people talking, all the overheard conversations were of fine intellectual timbre, of politics and business and literary matters, and of someone’s daughter’s unexpected pregnancy and discreet abortion. I loitered near several men who spoke knowledgeably about stick options, wishing I knew how to belch on command, but settled for a loud, theatrical yawn.
And yet, I write this not to scorn, but to marvel, and remember. Fifteen years ago, I was sort of a slight success, by Chestnut Street standards. If I’d stuck with that life, I could’ve been one of these sweater-clad people, talking as pretentiously as any of them, twirling the ice cubes in my elegant drink. Instead, I took a job that demanded less of me, gave away my neckties, my briefcase, and look at me now — I’m living in a slum, eating cat food sandwiches, wearing thrift store clothes and the same underwear I wore on Tuesday.
Reflecting on all this, I leaned on a darkened doorway and chuckled, so much more contented than I ever could’ve been if I’d stayed on the “upward trajectory.”
♦ ♦ ♦
On the #22 back to the slums, turning from Church to 16th Street, the trolley found a dead spot in the overhead wires, and we lurched to a sudden stop in the intersection.
Most of the passengers had experienced this before; I sure had. Trolley technology is very 1945.
“It’ll be ten or twenty minutes,” the driver said, “until a maintenance truck comes to nudge us a few inches to the live wires.” Looking out the window, there were cars cars going nowhere, everywhere, because a huge bus was diagonally bisecting two busy streets. It was beautiful.
“Or,” the driver continued, “a few of you big guys could get out and give us a push.”
He opened the bus doors, and four Good San Franciscans got off and walked to the back fender, and yeah, I was one of them. When the driver said “big guys” it sounded like a personal invitation.
One, two, three, push! The bus rolled forward an inch, then rolled back.
One, two, three, push! Again forward, but again back. Someone counted to three a third time and again we pushed, again the bus pulsed forward just a bit, just a bit, and just when I was wondering whether all this pushing might hurt my back tomorrow morning, we heard a spark above us, and the power surged and the bus came to life.
The other men got back on board, but we were only a few blocks from my hotel, so I walked the rest of the way, past Dolores, Guerrero, Valencia, Mission, 17th, 18th.
And there was the old man with his guitar, still strumming and singing, still sitting on his milk crate. I kinda knew he’d be there. It was kismet you could count on.
He was playing a song I didn’t know but wished I did, and I listened like I had an hour earlier, pretending not to, gazing into a store closed for the night but not really seeing it.
Next he played “Yesterday,” the most clichéd, overplayed, lounge-lizarded song ever written, but with only a guitar and a gentle singing voice, he made it mean something, made my eyes moisten. Very softly, I joined in on the last chorus, and he kindly pretended not to hear.
After that, I pretty much had to give him a dollar, so now I’m down to three until the weekend.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
