Westward to Frisco, I ran a brief errand out to the avenues before reporting for duty at the magazine, and along the streetcar route, counted 247 Christmas trees dumped on the sidewalks.

I’m not particularly ‘green’, but it was a somber sight. As if the family-induced suicides and twisted consumerism aren’t enough — Christmas has no redeeming social value at all.

The environment is like the economy — I have my ideas about how half-ass-backwards it’s being mismanaged, but my opinions don’t make a loogie’s difference to anyone who matters, so I don’t mention it much, don’t think about it often. The dead trees, though, reminded me of photos of the buffalo slaughters in the 19th century.

If a quick round trip on one city transit route shows hundreds of dead trees, chopped down to provide a few weeks of Xmas scenery and scent and then discarded as trash, how many millions of trees are sacrificed across the country every December and January?

And we do this not just with trees, but with with everything. Billions of geegaws in the stores, made of plastic and then wrapped in plastic, to be carried away in plastic bags, plastic that lasts forever. Millions of new cars built every year, each of them a ton of metal and glass destined for junkyards in ten or twenty years, after rolling around drinking gas and oil that can’t last forever, and killing people and crushing puppies in random wrecks along the way.

I have my doubts about all of it, about everything western civilization is proud of.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Working at Black Sheets this afternoon, Steve seemed extra chatty, cracking a lot of jokes at me. Usually he’s shy like me, but lately he’s warmed up, and today I had the distinct feeling that he was flirting. But I won’t be complaining to the city agency that pretends to give a damn about such inappropriate workplace behavior, ’cause after all, he is kinda cute.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Oh, and sarcastic thanks to the anonymous reader who sent this flyer about a “creative writing workshop” in Berkeley, called “Write About Your Life.” The flyer is a series of clunky incomplete sentences, promising that “award-winning writer █████ █████ MFA” will teach how to “make your life experience come alive for the reader.” And golly gee, the seminar is only $175.

“But before I sign up, could you please tell me who █████ █████ is, or show me something she’s written that’s worth one-hundred-and-seventy-five dang dollars, let alone the bother of walking six blocks to be bored silly at a seminar?

Until that’s explained, I’ll be absent, and remain intentionally ignorant of knowing how to make my life experience come alive. I’m not sure that good writing can be taught, but even if it can, nobody who writes well is teaching the class. Norman Mailer has better things to do. Only the █████ █████s of the world teach creative writing workshops.

— — —

Addendum, 2023: When I wrote my sneering dismissal of █████ █████ in 1996, I’d never heard of her, and had no way to know whether she could write. I printed her name because I was an ass, and nobody reads zines, so it couldn’t possibly hurt her feelings.

Today, armed with the internet and some early morning curiosity, I Googled her. She’s mentioned only once on the entire internet, in a PDF of a 1984 article in her college alumni newsletter, reporting that her poetry had won an award from the college.

The article included the prize-winning poem, which I’ve read. Like most poetry it’s not for me, but it’s credible, and probably better than the poetry I wrote last time I tried.

With only that one online mention of her name, Ms █████ must be either dead, married and using a new surname, or she’s given up writing. All those possibilities seem sad to me, and nothing good or kind could come from making this page her second citation online, so I’ve redacted her name.

Pathetic Life
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