Broke Fat White People

Last night I was minding my own business at my man Q's house in the Pearl District when I get drunk-dialed by Sammy's ass. He came to pick me up in the broken down Daewoo that he be driving these days, half in the bag, and demanded I take him to several seedy, dark, smelly strip bars around town while he accused me of being a half-ass friend and tried to get me to commit all 20USD I have to a "certain idea." Out of that trip came yesterday's stripper post ...

but the real fantastic discovery was Sizzler's. Years and years ago my family would stop by Sizzler's on some road trip across the nation and for me it always meant massive well stocked salad bars and shrimp platters I could never finish. Steaks I had to share with my punk ass little brother.

But this time around I was sober as a judge and 31 and I got a good glimpse of the Sizzler clientele. Holy Jesus. Sad looking overweight white people living a few blocks from Portland's "infamous" 82nd street sat dejectedly shoving food into their mouths and rising cumbersomely up for another stab at the appetizers and boiled egg salad. A table of old women, combined weight 1200lbs (6 ladies), sat chomping away and chatting about who knows what. Three of the ladies scooted around the salad bar in those motorized wheelchairs for the obese and arthritic.

The waitress ... she gave me the impression of a young tittering girl wearing a fake skin stolen from a tanning salon addict. She was nervous and anxious and brought us three servings of cheese bread (oh God) and giggled way too long at every drunken slobbering piece of bullshit Sammy spat out onto the table.

I sunk into depressed, resigned silence. Reflecting on the kids I aint got, the job I just lost, the wife that used to be fine and my gut that keeps growing.

Irvine, CA and ShadySecond Street Portland. I suppose Obama being elected tells us that these slices of our society are not the majority, but I think they are. It makes me feel like a well dressed man standing on the tip of an ice berg shouting for champagne while the rest of the ship's passengers slowly freeze to death a few feet below.

Strippers

Strippers wanna be watched, stared at, lusted over and dreamt about. Strippers watch themselves in the mirror and wish they could throw some ones at their own wiggling ass. Strippers wanna sit at the bar and talk politics in their skimpy suits and be taken seriously. Strippers want elicit sex between shows in the waiting room with the skinny tattooed bus boy as they tell each other in breathless whispers about all the Johns outside wishing wishing wishing ...Strippers want a rich mysterious hunk of a man to smoke silently in the corner shadowy and lusting and be taken by surprise on the way to the car. Strippers want those coveted night shifts so the money can roll in. Strippers want you to ask them their names as you stare at them, into them, drool about them in your head and they can reply with ardor in their eyes Nisei, Emily, Lynk, Berlin, Gabi, Roxy ... Strippers want to have the sex everyone is dreaming about having as they dance ... they want to go home at the end of the night and have chocolate ice cream and a back rub from their real man as they watch Deadwood and try not to think about rent. They wanna stop worrying and just do like Cyndi said ...

Strippers want me to write this post in my dungeon as the furnace kicks in and drowns out KBOO upstairs and all i can smell is stale cigarette smoke and last week's body odor still mingling with last night's trying to be down, trying to be accepted ...

The Phantom Menace

The only good thing to come out of Lucas' last three stabs at glory is the phrase Phantom Menace, used to describe a diversion that lures the Binks of the world astray ...

Justin Raimondo is the head writer at Antiwar.com and he was the man who first got me into writing geopolitical stuff back in 2001 when his analysis of the Hainan Spy Plane Incident was so salient and clear that I just had to give him his propers. He asked me if I could write about the man on the street in China and there it was. Justin is always several pages ahead of the crowd when it comes to trends in the world, be they economic, political or any other. He just has the clear vision. And when a sane man writes in a society of insanity, well one's tone might get strident and slightly angry. There is no peace for the rational man.

Here is his latest on World Government. Check it out and holler back in five years when Obama's second term promise is a "global structure of accountabilty ..."

there is a Chinese saying I always like to whip out when dealing with regionalism vs. globalism:

"分久必和，和久必分"

which means,

"long divided must unite, long united must divide ...."

The Last Transport is Away

Saw my man Doc Possible and his girlie Therin off to the Amtrak today. Doc is headed to illi-noise to re-tool and rest before embarking on a long and drawn out trip to take over the planet via gem dealing. We stopped by the China Garden in downtown Portland and head some Tie Guanyin oolong tea amidst the Japanese maples, magnolias, holly and of course the magnificent 100+ year old Osmanthus tree at the very entrance of the garden.

Life resumes, now that my tribe has dispersed again.

And life here is great in Portland. I love this society no matter what. But sometimes I hear something or read something or see something that just sets me off.

I was thinking today as I sat in Powells about the true impact of the "Greatest Gneration" of our grandfathers and grandmothers. And this is what I have come to:

WE all have the hero that stormed the beaches inside of us, but the Baby Boomers have discarded that hero and sold out. Now they revere Granpa who was a WWII hero and hate on us, the grandkid who rebels. When the true criminal in all of this is the 40 - 60 year old who is just now realizing that all his life he stomped on his world and blamed his kids for "not getting it." and only now is he figuring out that I have more in common with a WWII vet than he ever will. I have no more sympathy for the ignorant who claim that dreamers and hippies and antiwar activists and such are "anti establishment radicals who would never fit into a corporate world" and therefore of little regard to the "world at large." Where were these fools when MLK died? When Kennedy was shot? When NIxon was elected? When the war dragged on? They hid and sold while the hippies and Panthers were incarcerated and now they hate on us as we struggle hard against the coward they want us to be ... fuck them.

any man who believes that the established corporate world at large is the reality Man has been aspiring to is deeply scarred in some way that I have no more patience to even try and comprehend. I am sick of you people. Like Genghis I feel its time you were all rooted out, made to stand before your creations and held accountable. Quit hiding in your homes, behind your jobs, inside your cars and take responsibility for the shit I and my kids will have to deal with. How stupid do you have to be to destroy your planet in the name of quick and fleeting monetary profit and then turn to the kids trying to stop you and imprison them? I suppose the righteous have to believe in God because there is no solace for the rational benevolent man on Earth. Such men end up on the trash heap of society -- either in jail, on the streets or hiding out in the woods -- praying that he'll die a happy man before "they" come to get him and throw him back to the wolves. And I am preaching to the choir. If anyone even reads this to the end they are my friends and if they don't they'll "bounce" and shake their heads at just another pissed off half-rebel typing away on a busted Mac. Cliche, says the disinterested reader. Touche, says the bored soapbox pundit.

What made me think of all of this was a report from Brooklyn in which a man was sodomized by a cop for smoking a joint on the street.

A society that would even consider the justice of such an action is fatally sick. To beat the horse: How could you possibly rationalize the criminalization of marijuana unless you are so goddamn stupid and sheltered and disregarding of any and all facts?

When was the last time a man who was high beat his wife, died of cirrhosis, drove into a family of four, started a bar brawl or some other stupid drunken act?

When was the last time someone died of lung cancer, emphysema or some other long drawn out disease because he got high too much?

This is a small microcosm of our society that speaks volumes about the overall philosophy. When Blackwater mercenaries burn down weed fields and leave tobacco growing you know the world is all out of wack. I am sick of the hypocrisy and accusing tone of the "pillars of society" whose crimes make me vomit so bad i need to head to the local marijuana dispensary to get a repreive from the nausea ...

i am so sick of the bullshit. I see a face in my mind as I rant, its a fat pink face framed by glasses with a flattop haircut and Dick Cheney grin. I am infected by him and everywhere i go -- SE Asia, Africa, China, Tibet, S. America -- i not only see his virus spreading but i realize i am a carrier. Burning myself would give them too much satidsfaction so i guess i'll rant and fume and escape jail and the streets as long as i can untill i have my wilderness enclave to hide in. I get bitter when i think of Irvine, CA and the power they wield.

so i just think of my tribe scattered across the globe and hope the antidote we carry spreads as far as the virus. Godspeed Doc and take the revolution with you baby. I got you and believe i will hold it down in Portland ... me and the choir ...

Big Business in the Prison System

Hey Ya'll here is a story I wrote for Matador.com about the privatization of the prison system in the US. It is filled with links to sites doing work on this topic, i urge you to follow the trail wherever it leads, there will be some shocking revelations for you I guarantee ....

things are going on that we hear about but the truth is always lurking like moldy drawz in the corner ...

One Second Encounters

I left the Council of the Monkey in Pai and headed north through Laos to China. The other council members headed south to bangkok for school and such ... I ran out of money in Chiang Rai on the Laos border and had to trade a bottle of Sambuca for a broken bike.

I strapped my big pickle bag to the back of this bike with bungee cords and went off on a hilly ride across Laos to the border with China at the town of Mengla. I think it was about 100km or so to get there. In my bag i had two hookahs, three bottles of Sambuca, leather supplies and oils, clothes and books and a collection of teas, herbs and other junk collected over the past three months on the road.

There are no well-off areas in Laos and the hills I was biking through are poorer than most. I had a one second encounter there ...

As I rode through one road side village, the old women mobilized and rose up on skinny legs, yelling to the huts in the back and waving their arms in excitement when they saw me. At first i too was excited and slowed to see what kind of welcome they had for me ...

then a beautiful young girl, maybe 14 or so, came rushing out of the back huts holding up her skirts. She was surrounded by yelling and gesturing young boys and old women urging her on to the road. to me. I looked at her and her face was flushed red, beautiful against her brown perfect skin and her eyes held the young bride's combination of fear and anxious excitement ...

I was shocked and attracted at the same time. I felt obligated to stop and love her even as my soul screamed "PEDAL fool!"

Who knows how many men stopped here and paid for a month's worth of food for this village with just an afternoon or two with this young girl?

I caught her eye as i pedaled away and in her eyes she showed me that she was not only dismayed but hurt.

tell me about your One Second Encounters if you can remember them ...

Irvine, CA

I had a very fine Thanksgiving Holiday with my family in SoCal (southern California) and it is about to end in a few hours. I am headed back to Portland this morning with a small band of adventurers and we all can't wait to hit up the hot springs throw bills at the pretty ladies that dance all night and clash whiskey glasses together. cuz thats what we do, we be celebrating all the time, walking paths just looking, looking breathlessly. then celebrating what we saw.

so Irvine CA is where i got my most recent look into suburban life. My man Villar and me stopped in the District, which is a huge mall complex right off the highway into Irvine, and ordered a coffee. The District has a Target, a Chik-Fill-A and an In and Out Burger joint for starters. There is Peets and a copy shop, a couple of video stores and some specialty lamp shops. Its real clean and the people that walk around seem to be alien slugs sliding across a strange landscape half-heartedly looking for their spaceship back home.

My parents say,

Hey, come meet us at the Burger King across from Target in the District.

We're like, shit, no problem

We finish our coffees and head out leisurely to the BK that should be right down the sidewalk/street ... (my family was already in Irvine with my nephew and Villar had driven me down from El Lay to meet them). Long story short cuz I am way behind on whats been going on:

Irvine is a maze of complexes called the District surrounded by neighborhoods with perfect grass and the same old cookie cutter pseudo adobe homes and everyone has an SUV that they keep running while they wait for the wife to come out so junior can watch a DVD ... the Costco gas station is constantly pumping away to feed these peoples' insecurities. They have never even pissed on a tree let alone gone camping, but they have the latest in "off road" technology.

Rolling through SoCal gave me a glimpse of what it will take to really turn the US around. The suburban sprawl is addictive, entrenched, fearful, rich and growing. If anyone has pictures or comments about the suburban empire in the US -- like them highway spring-ups and such -- please send them in so I don't have to tell the whole story here ...

I had a great time with my family. My nephew is brilliant, sweet and super cute ... a few things he said:

First meeting after a few years: "Hey Unca Saschi! its so good to see you, I love you! We haven't hung out in a while, I got all sorts of stuff, i got my lightsabers and spiderman stuff ... we're gonna do all sorts of stuff ... man its gonna be awesome ..."

Dad rolls in while we are playing "piece o' me" which is short for "you wanna piece o me?" (call for a wrestling match) and says:

Hey, you two better quit playin grabass! (grabass is dads version of piece of me) and Jason goes:

Yeah Unca Saschi! Quit grabbin my ass!

************************************

I am already back in Portland after a few days with my tribe in Oakland. Kicked it with Tenz and Aliya, Big Scott, Johnny and janica, Doc and Therin ... so we drank whiskey and hollered at each for a few days then finally drove north to Ptown ... i yapped with my main men about all the things that have changed since I turned 30 and came back to the US after a perfect 8 yrs in China ... we be movin to the next stage of things and it feels good to know I am never really alone ...