Too much garlic

Today was a day off, so I read some zines, played with the dog, played with myself, mailed out a few sample copies of the zine, and worked on making some recent entries make sense. Ate too much, and kept my door closed, typewriter clacking, and mind misfiring. I do dearly love a closed door.

Nobody knocks on my door — no friends, and by choice, no family. They're a long ways away and we're not in touch, but I wasn't thinking today about how much I miss 'em. Kinda the opposite.

This is delicate, difficult to say it right, easy to misunderstand. I don't hate my family. I frickin' love each and all of them, but loving them is easier when I'm here and they're there, which is (part of) why I moved away, alone.

I like being in charge of myself, and when my family's around that's a battle. They want me to be something I'm not, someone I haven't been for a long time.

They're always in my business with questions and judgments, and their questions probably make sense, their judgment might be better than mine, but that's irrelevant. I want to live my life without those questions and judgments.

Nobody in my family understands that, and some of them haven't respected that.

Some of them are eccentric, and outspoken, and odd. Sometimes they say things better left unsaid. My family takes some getting used to, and I haven't gotten used to them yet.

It's like garlic bread — delicious if you use the right amount of garlic, but not if you shake it on and keep shaking and shaking. My family is too much garlic.

There were other factors, sure, but it's not merely coincidence that April, a woman I'd dated for five years, dumped me a few days after spending an afternoon with me and my family.

"One day I'll drop by unannounced, just to surprise you, and stay a week or a month…" 

That's what my mom said, when she visited me in San Francisco last summer. She meant it. It's her favorite daydream — to fly down to San Francisco without me knowing she's coming, to be suddenly at my doorstep, then inside my door, to read my zines, see my mess, cry about my porn, pry into my secrets, ask a thousand questions, and judge me a thousand ways.

I'm a man more solitary than most, but even by normal standards, could anyone hear something like that — "One day I'll drop by unannounced, just to surprise you, and stay a week or a month…" — as anything but a threat?

It's a credible threat, so I take it seriously. When I moved in with Pike, in March, I 'forgot' to give Mom my new address. Then came another move, to Berkeley with Judith, and heck if I didn't forget again to file a change-of-address card. Now nobody in the family knows where I live.

They do have an address for me, but it's a mail drop. If Mom flies to California to surprise me, and pops in at that address, she'll meet the middle-aged Asian man who sorts everyone's incoming mail into their boxes, for $12 p/month. Mom might try to sweet-talk my real address out of him, but if she does, my address on file at the mail drop is a vacant lot.

A few months ago, I switched to a new voice mail number for phone messages, but goodness golly, I 'forgot' to tell the family about that, too. I've been very forgetful lately.

So it's been a while since we chatted, but either everyone in the Holland family is getting along just fine, or one or more of them have died, or someone's getting divorced, someone else is getting married. Whatever's up or down with the family, it's news that'll keep until I'm ready to hear it, which might be a while.

Again I'll say it and again I mean it, I love 'em all and wish 'em well. Maybe I'll send a card in six months. Or a year.

♦ ♦ ♦

I've been part of Judith's house here in Berkeley for a month, and it suits me. It's an enormous mess, so I never have to be embarrassed by my own slovenly habits. The neighborhood isn't quite so whitebread as I'd originally thought, and my commute to work is a breeze. Judith is sweet, kind of a friend, and the three other men living here barely know I'm down the hall, and they leave me alone.

That's how I know this place is my home — people leave me alone.

From Pathetic Life #15
Tuesday, August 8, 1995

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.

Pathetic Life
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How it all ends

Before telling what happened yesterday, it must be acknowledged that I'm an ass and what I did only hurts myself. You don't need to scold me; I've already scolded myself.

And yet, when Dollar Tree has only one cash register open, as 21 people stand in a line stretching back to the $1.25 toilet paper and paper towels… I'm leaving. So I left.

It didn't matter how much I needed those four frozen cheeseburgers, and two big bottles of fruity water, and five mid-size sacks of chips at an unbeatable price. Everything was left behind, like atheists come the rapture.

Now it's Monday, and I must face the consequences: Today, tomorrow, and until I repeat that same trip to the store but actually stay and pay, my sack lunches will include no chips. Two peanut butter and Buddig sandwiches, by themselves, without anything salty and crunchy between the bites? I'm sad about that, even as the sandwiches are slipped into a sack.

It's my own damned fault. I had nowhere else to be but home alone, tilted in my recliner. If I'd simply sighed and waited in line however long waiting in line might have taken, I'd have chips today.

And I'd written the above before reading and re-typing a similar story from 27 years ago, for the latest stale Pathetic Life. On that day in 1995, just like yesterday, I walked into a store to buy something I wanted, got pissed off instead, and walked out without what I'd walked in for.

The point is obvious, isn't it? I'm the same shitty man now that I was then, impatient, full of idiotic indignation about the tiniest things, when I ought to be mellow and patient.

And I'm the same shitty writer, too. Half of everything I write is about what a business, a bus driver, a boss, my mom, or some stranger did, and how it pissed me off. It's all real, but it might as well be copypasta.

This website will end, I predict, shortly after I finally make an appointment to see a doctor about something scary, after letting it fester far too long because I hate doctors. Maybe it'll be headaches so powerful they've cracked my skull like an egg. Maybe it'll be a blood- and pus-leaking lump on my kneecap. What the heck, let's make it both — the cracked head and the pus-leaking knee.

Months after I should've, I'll make an appointment to see a doctor, some specialist in skulls and pustules. I'll be sitting in the waiting room, fuming because my appointment was supposed to be 45 minutes ago and I was on time, so where's this damned doctor? I've already read the clinic's copies of Modern Goiter and Carcinogen Update.

Well, I'll show them — by stomping out of the clinic, limping to the bus stop, riding home, typing a few funny paragraphs about it, and dying in my recliner a week later.

8/8/2022  

itsdougholland.com
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A fountain of news

They've improved bug-bomb technology since the last time I used the stuff, five years or so ago. Back then it stunk up the place so bad that even with the windows open afterwards, the room I'd bombed smelled like mustard gas and was uninhabitable for days.

This time, I bombed my room Saturday morning and slept in the guest room that night, but by last night the room didn't smell any worse than the average woman wearing perfume, so I was back in my own bed.

There were some dead roaches on the floor, but not many. Another one came crawling out from under my blanket, but it was staggering like a drunk, weaving this way and that and tripping over its own head. It wouldn't have survived even if I hadn't smashed it between my fingers. I'm declaring roaches extinct at my place in Berkeley.

♦ ♦ ♦

BART got me to my weekly gig at Black Sheets kinda early, so I stopped at the little grocery store near the train station, grabbed a newspaper and stood at the counter to pay.

This was in my old neighborhood. I've been to that store a hundred times, and standing at the counter waiting to pay is ordinary. The counter-guy always has something more important to do, and today he was talking on the phone about his weekend. Hell, that's more important than me standing at the counter.

There was nobody else in the store, just him and me, me standing there waiting while he talked on the phone about the concert and the band and the seats and the drugs. With ten minutes to spare, there was no big hurry, but I didn't have the patience, so after half a minute I twirled the newspaper over the counter and into the air at the boob on the phone.

It was a fountain of news — the business section flew north, the sports pages fluttered north by northwest, and arts & entertainment missed the clerk's head by mere inches.

"What's your problem?" I heard him saying as I walked out, but I didn't answer. He'd been talking on the phone longer than I'd been in the store, so he was probably still talking on the phone, right? It would've been rude of me to interrupt.

From Pathetic Life #15
Monday, August 7, 1995

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.

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No bus to the bus barn

or, How to drive a bus (part 4)

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5 

Part 6     Part 7     Part 8     Part 9     Part 10

 Part 11     Part 12     Part 13     Part 14     Part 15

My week of classes and videos for driving the bus is over, and I passed the first test. Aced it, I guess — they gave us four hours to complete the test, and I was done in an hour and 15 minutes, and scored 93.

#174
Sunday,
August 7, 2022

Now comes two weeks of hands-on training, driving the bus (but not on the street yet) and securing wheelchairs (probably with nobody in them) inside the bus. 

I still have worries about this job. With office work, if you make a mistake you might get yelled at. With driving a bus, if you make a mistake somebody might die. And I make lots of mistakes, in everything I do. Then again, I look at my classmates, especially that ex-cop. If he can do this job, I can do this job. He seems so… 

Wait, I don't want to say 'stupid'. He's not stupid, just way too willing to say the wrong thing at the wrong moment. He has no working filter.

We ended up sitting side-by-side all last week, and yeah, he's an ex-cop, but he seems like a nice guy. All week he never said anything mean, unless you count telling our union rep that he hates unions and thinks they're a rip-off. She laughed it off. I'm sure she's heard worse.

It's a closed shop, so everyone's required to join the union, and I'm delighted to be a Teamster. I'm still on job-hunting e-lists, and a few days ago they sent notice about basically the same job I've been hired for — driving a disabled transit van, but for a different company, a non-union company. Their starting pay is $4/hour less than my starting pay. Yeah, give me a union every time, please.

And then yesterday, what comes across on that job-hunt e-list? Exactly the job I wanted, before being hired as a bus driver.

Metro Transit is looking for someone to answer phones for the bus system, to explain to newbies how transit works, and how to catch the bus that'll take them from where they are to where the want to be. And it pays a little more than driving the short bus. And it's a far, far easier commute.

Driving the disabled bus, I'll have to get to the bus barn and back five nights a week, and it's in an industrial section of a distant suburb, a very long drive from home. Ironically, the bus service to the bus barn is quite bad, so I'll have to drive.

The phone gig, though, would be either downtown (very easy commute on the bus) or work-from-home (even easier). If they'd hire me for that, I would quit driving the bus in half a heartbeat, so I've applied, but I applied as me — meaning, I answered the application's open-ended questions honestly. I told them I'm a bus geek, and opened my cover letter with "Howdy," made a couple of jokes, and blabbered on about how much I love riding the bus.

If an HR person reads my application and resumé I'll have no chance, but if someone who gives a damn about transit reads my app I'll be a shoo-in. Most likely, it'll be HR and no chance. Getting that phone job would be too cool, too perfect, and nothing in life works out that well.

Oh, one more thing. I gotta tell you about the CPR part of our training, but instead of writing it again, I'll just paste in the email I sent to the American Red Cross:

The emergency training at my job this week was of no value whatsoever. I am kinda startled that Red Cross even allows this.

All the videos and training material were branded Red Cross, but nobody from Red Cross was present. The class was taught by a company trainer, the same person who's teaching us how to drive a bus, and she was helped by her boss. During CPR training they disagreed about where to push for chest compressions, with the boss teaching everyone to push on the stomach instead of the chest.

And they allowed jokes all through the proceedings. One new hire was making 'grunt' noises during Heimlich training, every time a man had to put his hand over a woman's chest to practice the back thumps, and then do the stomach thrusts from behind. It was like 7th grade, and nobody said STOP IT except me.

All through this, the person in the room who seemed to know what to do, and answered everyone's questions, was not one of the teachers. She was someone I'd never met, maybe another new hire who'd been CPR trained at her previous job. I'd had CPR training, too, but it's been years, and everything about this session only confused me.

For the closing quiz, the answers were read aloud to the class, during the test, so of course everyone 'passed'. To get any answer wrong, you'd have to write down something other than what the teacher had just said. So 17 people got their Red Cross certification, and at least 14 of us would be useless in any emergency.

When I got home, I went to the Red Cross site, and learned more in twenty minutes than I'd unlearned in that hours-long session. Thank you for that, but I have one question:

Why didn't we have a genuine Red Cross employee, or volunteer, or someone who knew CPR and the Heimlich maneuver, to teach us CPR and the Heimlich maneuver?

Next: Tumbling
or, How to drive a bus (part 5)  

 

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5 

Part 6     Part 7     Part 8     Part 9     Part 10

 Part 11     Part 12     Part 13     Part 14     Part 15

There are three doors leading into this house. The front door opens onto the top floor, where me and my three flatmates live. The back door, after a short walk down a hill, opens to the basement, where four other flatmates live. The third door is an emergency exit from the upstairs kitchen, with about thirty rickety wooden stairs leading down to an alleyway in the back.

Sometimes my packages get delivered to the back door, which is a slight hassle, but a few days ago UPS somehow delivered a package to the emergency exit. I didn't think to look there until two days later, when I was getting ready to claim it as undelivered. How could they even find the emergency exit? It's nearly invisible from the street. The front door seems like a more obvious choice.

And now, the news you need, whether you know it or not…

♦ ♦ ♦ 

UN nuclear chief: Ukraine nuclear plant is "out of control" 

♦ ♦ ♦

Parts of the moon have stable temperatures fit for humans, researchers find 

♦ ♦ ♦ 

A challenge for antiabortion states:
Doctors reluctant to work there 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Patton Oswalt critiques his top and bottom 5 science fiction films 

I disagree with Oswalt about the first Star Trek movie — I like it — but his criticisms are valid and funny. And he's sure right about Close Encounters.

♦ ♦ ♦   

List of premature obituaries 

♦ ♦ ♦  

List of unusual deaths 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Are you legally allowed to just stay in the roundabout indefinitely? 

♦ ♦ ♦  

One-word newscast, because it's the same news every time...
• climate • climate • climate • climate • climate • climate • climate
• cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops 
• Republicans • Republicans • Republicans • Republicans • Republicans

♦ ♦ ♦ 

♫♬  Sing along with Doug  ♫
"I Wanna Love You Tender," by Armi & Danny 

♦ ♦ ♦

The End
• Pat Carroll
• Alan Grant
• Mo Ostin 

8/7/2022 

 

Cranky Old Fart is annoyed and complains and very occasionally offers a kindness, along with anything off the internet that's made me smile or snarl. All opinions fresh from my ass. Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited.

 

Tip 'o the hat to Linden Arden, ye olde AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, Captain Hampockets, CaptCreate's Log, John the Basket, LiarTownUSA, Meme City, National Zero, Ran Prieur, Voenix Rising, and anyone else whose work I've stolen without saying thanks.

 

Extra special thanks to Becky Jo, Name Withheld, Dave S, Wynn Bruce, and always Stephanie...

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itsdougholland.com
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Enough already.

"Fish!"

That's my sales pitch — short and droll. Over and over every day on Telegraph, I say "Fish!" as people walk by. If it gets their attention, they'll stop and look and maybe buy a fish sticker or magnet.

If the fish aren't jumping, I might reel people in by saying, "Fish, damn it," but that's everything I know about sales technique.

Today I said "Fish, damn it," as the wrong man was walking by — a Christian who stopped, frowned, and asked, "Do you have to use such language?" Then he looked at the fish, and began an angry spiel about taking God seriously, because God must always be taken seriously.

Weary of Christians who lack a sense of humor, I replied, "If you don't like the fuckin' fish, then go to fuckin' church and fuckin' pray for me." Umberto, working next to me, thought that was funny, but the Christian didn't. It's my cross to bear.

If you want to talk about the fish, even tell me the fish are offensive, talk to me reasonably and I'll converse. You want to threaten me with the wrath of your god? I am simply not interested, and I'll laugh at you, ridicule you, fart at you.

That guy shook his finger at me, and said, "I'll be back," and I had no idea what that meant. Should I have been afraid? He was a thin, smallish man (which is why I'd so courageously told him off), so visions of Schwarzenegger didn't dance in my head, but the thought that he might return with a gun did. I've seen a few scary Christians on the Ave.

♦ ♦ ♦

Later on, who walked by? The lady vendor who'd worked to my left yesterday, and complained about the book, What Lesbians Do. She gave me crap about it again, and then she said, "And anyway, what do you know about what lesbians do?"

"I don't even know what straight women do," I said, "but my boss wrote the book, and she's done plenty of lesbians, knows all about what they do."

"Then why isn't she out here selling her smut?"

And you know what? Enough already. Enough with Christians angry about fish, and enough with Democrats angry about lesbians. "Leave," I said, pointing to her stall half a block down Telegraph. When she didn't immediately leave, my follow-up line was, "Just get your face away from my table. And I mean, right now."

At that very moment, the "I'll be back" Christian came back (which his Lord and Savior never will). He was accompanied by a large woman I assume was his wife, and she was immediately angry about the fish. No warm-up, no studying the display, she walked right up to me and started shouting, "This is blasphemy!" and some similar stupidities.

I've heard it all before, and have I mentioned? I wasn't in a good mood.

The vendor from yesterday, angry about the book, wouldn't yield to the jumbo fanatical Christian, angry about the fish, so both women were yelling at me at the same time, a ca-ca cacophony. I sighed and stood there for too long, sort of enjoying the show but also sort of furious. Thought I'd have to hose them down, like my dad drenched some dogs that fucked in our yard once.

Instead I grabbed two copies of What Lesbians Do, one in each hand, held out one for each of them, and said loudishly, "Here! A free book for each of you, with my compliments. Why don't you both read it, and then go fuck each other?"

The Christian woman took the book from me, and threw it onto my table with all her might, but all her might wasn't much; the book wasn't even damaged. "We'll be back," she said, same as her husband had said, and then she stomped away, huffing and puffing and dragging him behind her.

The vendor from yesterday, though, wouldn't take her free chapbook, and wouldn't shut up. She wasn't screaming or anything, but she was giving me a tirade that never seemed to end. Jeez, lady, I thought, how much can one person complain about a silly book of poems with a provocative title?

Several stalls down the street, there were dozens of t-shirts with no vendor watching them, because she was at my table, screaming at me, instead of at her table, selling her tie-dye. So I announced in my deepest, most 'official' voice, "Free t-shirts, everybody! Right this way," and I pointed at her stand.

"You're an asshole," she said to me, shaking her head as she walked away, but the best part was, she walked away.

"Works better if you stay calm," Umberto said to me. He often takes crap for his anarchist stickers, so I reckon that's expert advice, and I thanked him. 

Only a few minutes later, before I'd calmed down much, yet another idiot Christian came by. He paused at the table, looked at the fish, and I'd never seen him before but I'd seen that look on his face, so I knew what was coming. I smiled and waited. Here it comes. What's he gonna say?

He said, "Don't you have any real fish?"

"No," I said, expressionless but exasperated. "Real fish would get real stinky out here in the sunshine."

"That's not what I mean," he said, because the complaining Christians never get any jokes. "Don't you have the Jesus fish?" His eyes narrowed, and I could see that he almost understood. "Or are you making fun of the Jesus fish?"

"Exactly," I said, smiling my fattest, fakest smile. "Isn't it obvious? Would you like a 666 fish?"

He walked off, leaving a cloud of righteous indignation, but at least he didn't threaten "I'll be back." I sold that 666 fish to a guy who'd been walking by, and thought the conversation was all very funny, but was it? You tell me. I'm weary of it.

And all afternoon I kept looking for the jumbo & pipsqueak Christians who'd said they'd be back. It would be a lie to say I wasn't a little concerned. Didn't see either of them again, though, so a devout Christian lied to me. No surprise.

When I started selling these novelty fish on the Ave, the worst reaction was a frown, but starting in mid- or late-June, there've been Christians in my face fairly regularly, and they seem to be getting hotter with the summer. For the last week or so, when it's not someone angry about the fish, it's someone angry about What Lesbians Do.

Fuck 'em all. Better yet, crucify them. I just want to sell fish, so I haven't liked my job much these past few days. Maybe I need to carry a squirt gun with me on Telegraph. Maybe I should wear a bulletproof vest. What it's all building up to, I don't know, but I am tired of taking crap about fish and poetry.

From Pathetic Life #15
Sunday, August 6, 1995

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.

Pathetic Life
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