It was a nice day to do nothing, which is what I did, interrupted only for a jaunt to the Rainbow to stock up on beans and rice and et cetera. Off we go…

On my way out of my building, I was annoyed to see a Chronicle sports page in the hotel lobby, so I stuffed it in the trash can.

Atop the BART escalator, some scab was selling papers, and I shouted at him, “You make me sick.” He said something back to me, but I couldn’t hear it, riding the rolling stairway down.

In the station, yet another strikebreaker was selling a tall stack of papers. Newspapers everywhere, many more this morning than I’d seen in the last week and a half. My mood was dropping like a hooker’s panties, so I growled up a thick wad of phlegm and took aim at an Examiner front page, and bent over to spit at it from inches away.

Tongue curled, lips puckered, loogie loaded, here it comes — but at the last moment I decoded the banner headline, upside down from my angle:

pǝlʇʇǝs ǝʞᴉɹʇs ɹǝdɐdsʍǝN

Swallowed my spit and kept walking, but regretted it within footsteps. Yeah, I should’ve loogied that stack of papers. If it’s still headline news that the strike has been settled, then that issue of the Examiner was written by scabs, and I’m not buying it.

Won’t buy tomorrow’s paper, either, because the vote to ratify usually takes a few days. Maybe on Monday morning I’ll buy a Chronicle from the old guy in the newsbooth at Powell @ O’Farrell, tip him big, and get back in the habit of reading the daily lies.

♦ ♦ ♦

After lazing and grazing the rest of the day, I was thinking about unanswered letters, with a sunken feeling in my gut. Letters to write is an obligation, and I hate obligations.

It’s something I hadn’t anticipated about making a zine — letters. There are two letters to be answered on my end table, one magnetized to the fridge, one taped to the light switch, and one next to the typewriter.

People read the zine, like it I guess, and that’s what I’m hoping for. They write letters, and I love the letters … but writing a letter back to Billy Bob Bifflesnort in Hog’s Hide, Iowa feels like a chore.

And after that, four more letters to write? Hell, I don’t write that many letters to my family in a year.

There are other things on my to-do list — go to the movies, read zines and a few novels I’ve been meaning to get to, gross out tourists in Union Square, talk back to the street preachers, etc. Gotta write this drivel, too.

Therefore I am absolving myself of all guilt over unanswered letters. The new policy will be:

Letters are excellent and appreciated. I read ’em all, and print selected highlights if they’re interesting. But letters are never owed. You don’t owe me a letter, and I don’t owe you a letter, so those five letters are in the bin now.

If this makes me seem like an ass, let me explain: I’m an ass.

Pathetic Life
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