Today I re-explored the neighborhood, semi-desperately trying to find a restaurant with even half the charm and quality at twice the price as the late Sincere Cafe. Came up blank, but had the new experience of being drive-by panhandled.
From Pathetic Life #24
Thursday, May 2, 1996
A recent-vintage Ford Taurus cruised by too slowly on 18th Street, walking speed basically, keeping pace with people on the sidewalk, while a sad-looking middle-aged white woman leaned out the back door’s window, asking for spare change.
Was it performance art, or a gag (and is there a difference?)? I don’t think so; the woman looked miserable and poor indeed, and so did the man driving. If there was a joke, they didn’t seem in on it.
Maybe it was a stolen car? If so, points for technique, but I wasn’t about to hand a quarter, a dime, even a nickel through the window as the car rolled by. You want to beg, get out and grovel on the sidewalk like the rest of us.
♦ ♦ ♦
A billboard at a bus stop caught my attention, and made me laugh so loud even the drunks shied away from me. Accompanied by nonsensical imagery of an upside-down man with a blurred face, the text on the sign said:
You’ve got your own point of view.
Express it!
On Election Day,
vote for your candidate,
vote for your country,
but most of all,
vote for yourself!
Yes, it was presented as it if was poetry. Quite bad poetry. I hawked a loogie at it, hitting the billboard just under the ‘o’ in ‘country’.
The concept of voting is lovely, and so’s democracy and all that, in theory anyway, but I sure don’t care for the options we’re forced to choose between. Anyone who’d seriously change and improve things is screened out at the first step of the process, leaving only choices between more of the same, and even more of the same. And voting for myself? Honey, I’m the only candidate I’d never vote for. So what does voting get us? More of the same.
♦ ♦ ♦
Back at the hotel, two pleasant surprises.
First, running water. But even better, I was wrong when I said Sarah-Katherine no longer writes to me. There was a letter from her in the last mail haul, only I didn’t know it, because the envelope didn’t have a return address. Pretty sweet letter, 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.
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