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Showing posts with label Arco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arco. Show all posts

Sunday, March 11, 2012

State-Sponsored Communists In My Mailbox

U.S. Postal Service trademarked Pony Express logoImage via Wikipedia
I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
---Thomas Edison


The Arconians decided to add 14 more hours to my 12 hour work week this week, so I guess I won't have to shag it at Labor Ready for a while.

My roommate Creepy was sulking today when he found out I get a 15% employee discount over at the Arco even when I'm not working there and free drinks while I am. It's just not fair, you see, that I should get something he doesn't get. It's really upset him.

What? Was he raised by communists, socialists or Democrats or somethin'?

Speaking of communists, that fine Irish actor, the Postmaster Dufus, is on TV again saying with a straight clown face that the taxpayers shouldn't bear the burden of safe mail, but that the government should pay for it. Where does that clown think the government gets its money from? Bake sales?

Then he clarifies his Newspeak, saying the postal customers (junk mailers) shouldn't foot the bill, the taxpayers should. Oh, now I get it. He's trying to protect the profits of the junkmailers by adding a post office tax on working people's paychecks.

Five billion dollars, please. Screw him. Triple the price of stamps if that's what it takes. Don't take it out of my Labor Ready paycheck. If the U.S. Post Office can't compete with Fedex, let them go bankrupt like capitalism dictates. Let's see how long that Postmaster lasts in a REAL job, the #$%& corporate welfare bum.

In case you didn't know, the "patriotic" U.S. airlines have bumped so much U.S. mail off their planes in favor of more profitable cargo that the U.S. Postal service subcontracts its airmail to Fedex anyway. Let's cut out the middleman (the frikkin' U.S. Post Office). It's an anachronistic institution that we should have dismantled years ago.

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Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Not Going Anywhere 'Easy'

English: Homeless man, Tokyo. Français : Un sa...Image via Wikipedia


Three to five hours of humping beer and soda cases at the Arco gas station every day is no longer enough exercise for me. This last week I've found myself yearning for more, so I started lifting light weights at 'home' in my crack motel room. While I'm watching Fox News in 'my' broken barcolounger, I pump a 10 pound hand weight across my chest . . . two hours every night. I'm feeling the burn.
My feet are getting better, too. Ten years of working / slacking on my ass had decimated my foot muscles from atrophy, apparently. My foot pain used to stay with me for three or four hours after I'd gotten off my feet. Now it's gone in half an hour.
My health got really bad during my homelessness in the car. Sometimes I'd lay in that car for days and days without ever getting out (in matters of toiletry, I can only say that if nothing goes in, nothing comes out).
I probably should have died many times in the nineties. Medically, I definitely should be dead, but I'm a hardheaded, stubborn contrarian. I'll be damned if I'm gonna go anywhere easy.

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Monday, January 30, 2012

Clocking Arconia

It is better to wear out than to rust out.---Richard Cumberland


Cabbage Patch the crack ho came into the Arco today while I was stocking the Gatorade in the freezer. She's got a new Mars Attacks hairdpiece that looks better than her Pageboy and Raggedy Ann wigs. She shouldn't have any trouble attracting attention standing on the street corner wearing the Mars Attacks piece. It makes her look like Danny DeVito's Penguin with a tall cactus on his head. What john could resist THAT?

Therelle The Face Licker came in, too. He had to rest his tongue from walking up to strangers on the sidewalk and licking their face as he does every day. Both Face Licker and Cabbage Patch seemed taken aback to find ME working for wages. They had gotten used to thinking of me as a man of dubious leisure. The fat man has gone square. Just what's the neighborhood coming to?

Yes, kids, I work at a gas oasis with Alaa The Giggler and a new guy named Kamel. I'm getting good at filling propane tanks. You'll recognize me right off if you see me there. I'm the sweating, groaning anarchist in the freezer. I couldn't make this stuff up if I smoked pot all day.

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Saturday, January 28, 2012

The Devil In The Details: My Arcology Begins

Self-made photo of Hillbilly Hot Dogs, a roads...Image via Wikipedia
Breaking The Color Barrier!
I have broken the color barrier at Arco. I work there part time now (12 hours a week at minimum wage . . . almost enough to pay my rent). I put in 6 1/2 hours yesterday running the cash & gas registers. I now know how to run a lottery machine. I get 50 cents off cigarettes and hot dogs and all the free coffee I can guzzle while I'm working. Coolness.

I’ll try to get other jobs to add to my Arco employment now that I’ve proved to myself that I CAN get straight work. Think I'll apply at Scaife Security next door. You can't go wrong with a name like 'scaife'.

Autobiography of a Money-godless Man
(next day)
Scaife wanted to hire me on the spot to guard school children as soon as I could drive out there, but they wanted me to quit Arco with no notice and I just don't think that's an honorable way to act. No sir. Hired one day, quit the next. What do they think? That I am a native Angelino?

I hounded those Arconians for that job. Besides, if my word is no good, then I REALLY got nothing.

You may think I'm stupid. The Scaife guy didn't understand me at all. He said the school job was at least $280 a week and the Arco job is maybe $70 a week and what was there to think about?

Man, I want money and I desperately NEED money, but money is not my God. Maybe I should've put that at the bottom of the autobiography Scaife Security required that I write as a part of my job interview.

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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Kind Seeks Kind




I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
---Oscar Wilde

 

While I was down at the DMV getting a $5 copy of my H6 driving record for some prospective driving jobs, I filled out an application to work at the DMV. I'm no longer holding out hope for that cashier job at the Arco gas station next door. The Mediterranean owner seems to have a policy of only hiring non-native people who know English only as their second language.

That's his prerogative as a business owner. If he wants to discriminate against Americans in America, he can. He has the full support of the American government to hire only aliens if he wants to.

I guess he figures aliens will be more controllable employees. I would take my cigarette business to the Korean liquor store across the street, but that guy over there refuses to carry my brand. He says Carltons don't sell enough to bother with ordering them.


I sold some books as the used book store today at about 20 cents on the dollar to be able to get a $7 haircut. I hope I look more clean-cut and hireable. I had enough cash left over to buy a $2 pair of Salvation Army dress slacks. I'm trying to overcome the handicap of not having a criminal record and being able to pass a drug test. Seems like the employers in THIS neighborhood would be more comfortable with me if I could flunk the drug test.

You think I'm kidding, don't you? Well, remember one of the immutable laws of the universe: kind seeks kind.


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As Close To Hell As You Can Get Without Being Dead

Illustration of Dante's Inferno, Canto 8Image via Wikipedia
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
---Mark Twain


I went down to the gas tank cleaning place to apply for a job today. The Creepmobile --my roommate’s car-- barely made it. It chugged and huffed and hesitated at every turn as if it knew what I knew about this job and didn't really want to go, either.

I was talking about this job in the Arco this morning when a customer overheard and said he knew that job. He used to do it. He said that job is as close as you can get to hell without dying.


I went down and applied anyway. I peeked into the back room while me and two illegal aliens were filling out the application forms. It looked like something out of "Metropolis" back there. Steamy and furnacey.

The sound of hammers hitting metal anvils made the place SOUND like Dante's Inferno.

I completed the form and turned it in anyway. I've got the Creepster on my back. He's making 'move out' noises at me. I gotta kick in my half of the rent on the crack motel room we're sharing. He's got a steady unemployment check coming in and the silly sophomaniac thinks that makes him superior to my sporadic day labors.

The Mexicans caught a whiff of the burning metal and blood smells coming from the back room and vamoosed.


An older guy in a suit and tie walked in for his job interview and we chatted a few minutes. The old guy was one of the thousands of aircraft industry workers laid off in this neighborhood recently. He looked worried. Hell, he looked like a guy going in for prostate surgery during an anesthetic shortage. Twenty six years he gave those bastards and they threw him out like moldy yogurt.


He didn't tell me that. I read it off his face. He was trying to get some moral support from me, but I had little to give. I had seen the back room before an alert receptionist closed the door. They had looked like Star Trek Borgs back there.

The ex-aircraft worker looked to me for comfort, but I'm scared shitless myself. With any luck, they'll be drilling machine parts into my skull in a week.



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New All-Night Ghetto Candy Store

English: A typical Mobil gas station. This one...Image via Wikipedia

Today started early this morning when I walked over to the Arco gas station at 4 a.m. to get some cigarettes. Through the bulletproof night window, I diagnosed the night clerk's computer problem, got my cigs and returned a few minutes later with the software and manuals he needed to fix his obsolete Mac.

I just gave the Arco night guy a System 8.5 CD and some system manuals to fix his ailing Macintosh computer. Hope I get the CD back.


While I was visiting this night clerk, I noticed that several crackheads seemed to be hanging around his night slot and then scattered like gamblers at a poker raid when I approached. After I walked away, they ran back up to that night slot like they were being sucked back by some invisible force.


Suspicious. Maybe that guy has set up an all-night ‘candy’ store for the local druggies, pushing crack through his night slot. How entrepreneurial.



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Bon Chance, Children of The Write



Dieses Eis schmeckt nach Seife.---Mudhead

Onefugi, day clerk at the Arco, always greets me at the Arco counter with a big smile. She loves the stories I email her, especially the tales of my roommate Creepy. She calls them 'her stories', like women say of their Harlequin romance novels.
"I love reading my stories from you," she says, "I show them to my husband," she tells me, "You know, he says you must be CRAAAAA-ZEEE!"
"A common opinion," I answer.
'My stories'. THAT, my friend, is quite a compliment. I get other compliments; direct ones that warm my heart and indirect ones that let me know I've touched a nerve of truth. I've even gotten compliments that made me check my back pocket to make sure my wallet was still there, but 'my stories' is the kind of compliment I really like.
'My stories' implies a kind of co-ownership; co-ownership of the ideas and thoughts and characters in my stories. Like she can really relate. Like she lived some of the events in my stories THROUGH my stories, if she hasn't lived them herself in her own life already.
My stories are like children. They're all influenced by me, but each has its own personality. Anyone, like The Russian, who says they're all the same, hasn't lived with them very long, didn't REALLY want to know them. Wanna really piss me off? Ignore my children!
I encourage my children to go out into the world and make their mark. Maybe I don't encourage them enough. Whatever. But what they do once they're out there is beyond my control. Good luck, children!

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Paralegal Mime & Missionary Patrol



No price is set on the lavish summer,
June may be had by the poorest comer.

----James Russel Lowel


I woke at midnight tonight, walked over to the Arco station for some cigarettes, startling Mike, the night clerk there, a little, walking in out of the dark night as I do. Most of his customers drive in to the station.
I made the international hand gesture for "I want to smoke" and Mike knew which brand to slip through the safety box. I hate it whenever they get a new night clerk there. When that happens, I have to do a whole mime routine to explain that I want cigarettes and I want Carlton Menthols. I use "Car" (automobile) and "Ton" (staggering under a very heavy weight) to get my cigs.
I answered some email for a couple of hours and took a smoke break outside in my motel courtyard. A 14 year-old crackhead and his mother rode up out of the darkness on their bicycles and stopped in front of me.
"Isn't it a little past your bedtime, young man?" I joked to the boy.
His mother wasn't amused. 2 a.m. and she's on a mission to the new Motel Marquis candy store ( the new resident drug dealer ). She squinted at me, trying to decide if I was an undercover cop, then trudged up the stairs to her drug dealer as the boy watched the bikes. Everybody around here thinks I'm a cop when they first see me and that's racist. Do all white guys in this neighborhood gotta be cops? No. Me? I'm a paralegal at best. Besides, I'm not white, tete d'epingle.
I looked at the boy, shook my head, and stepped back inside.
Around 3:30, I walked back to the Arco for more cigarettes. On my way past the next door vacant lot, the Vietnamese cat-sacrificing voodoo lot, I noticed a clump of clothes in the tall grass. It was a Colombo jacket, a trench coat. I always wanted a Colombo jacket. Maybe I'll jump the fence where it's torn most of the way down and nab that jacket, I thought as I continued towards the Arco.
"PSSSST!" the jacket said. I turned.
"PSSSSST!" it said again. I looked more closely. There was a man in that jacket. Oh, well, I thought, so much for that, and I continued walking to the Arco.
Mike looked at me through the supposedly bullet-proof, mostly soundproof glass at the cashier's window. NOW what did I want? Couldn't be cigarettes, I was just there a few hours ago for cigarettes. Mike is friendly enough, but a little confused about American appetites. I got him to slide open the safety box enough to where I could talk through it.
"Whatsa matter, Mike? You think I smoke too much? Yeah, that's right. I'm here for more Carltons."
"You live here?" Mike asked as we made the cash/pack exchange. He waved his arm in the general direction of the street.
"I have a mission over there at the motel," I answered, "Very exclusive."
Mike looked confused.

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Monday, January 16, 2012

Unemployed Thoughts On The Food Chain

SeerImage by James Jarvis via FlickrA man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
---Epictetus


I was walking over to the Arco to get some cigarettes tonight when one of the crack whores catcalled out to me "Hey, buddy. Wanna see the mystery of life?"

What she was referring to was a crude $1 live street corner peep show, but still it was a much, much more intelligent come-on than what they usually say. It got me thinking about the basics.


I think the basic question in life, going way back to whenever we first started despoiling this planet, is "Can I eat it, or will it eat me?"

We have gotten away from that. We have secured our superiority in the food chain (hee hee, so we delude ourselves) thus we flounder around with less important worries now, mostly about how much stuff we can accumulate (before something eats us).


I need a job. Not to get more stuff but so I can continue to hang around here and get philosophical inspirations from the crack hoes.


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Saturday, April 23, 2011

King of the Beer Humpers: A Corporate Shill

    There's going to be a public hearing in a few days to decide whether my employer will be able to build his car wash and adult day care center on the Vietnamese Voodoo and Crackhead Smoking plot of ground next door. Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors second district supervisor Yvonne "I Never Met A Whitey I Could Stand" Brushwaite Burke is holding the hearing for a group of local residents who are against car washes and old folks homes.

    The neighbors are also concerned, it seems from their complaint, that the increased traffic will disrupt the crack heads, whores and cruising johns who are currently using the vacant lot.

    The developer who is building the car wash and fogey day care center, Ventura Leasing Corporation, has decided to bring out its big gun, its heavy weight, at the hearing, you'll never guess this one---- me. Yes me. The Fat Man. Ironweed. Crusty The Stock Boy. You heard it here first, folks. The Marquis deJolie has got himself a gig as a corporate shill.

     I will be writing my employer's talking points and helping him field questions at the hearing. I will be circulating a counter-petition to SUPPORT the project. And, typical of my cheap-assed Mediterranean employer, I will be paid bupkiss plus a dinner. My boss said that if I combed my feral hair and wore a clean pair of jeans to the hearing, he would take me out to dinner afterwards. Better be a damned good dinner. I spent a whole hour with him this afternoon going over project blueprints. I want Mediterranean chickenkabob and humus for that.

    Not to worry about me being too taken advantage of, though. I've figured an angle where I might be able to wangle a few hundred bucks on the side out of this thing. Hey, in Keynesian economics models, a few hundred bucks is better than nothing. Plus, if I pull it off for the Arco owner, the Arco manager will totally lose control of her stock boy. I'll be able to read magazines in the cooler and make the beer vendors do half my work if I want to. I'll be King of the Beer Humpers!
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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Sore Feet, Sore Heads And It's Still Raining Jobs



Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
---Frédéric Chopin


     I did eight hours of Labor Ready warehouse work today for Aaron Art Supplies. Add seven hours of waiting around the labor hall to get the job and I've had a long day. My feet are killing me, but my long dry spell of unemployment is suddenly over for some reason --- it's raining jobs and I don't know why --- so I'd better make hay while the sun shines, sore feet or no.

     Yesterday I spent three hours at my parttime job at the Arco scrubbing down the 14 gas pumps there. I'm catching up on all the exercise I never attempted over the last six years. My arms, legs and heart are holding up under all the strain. It's my damned feet that are slowing me down.

     It was supposed to be a 4 hour gig today of setting up display racks for a new art supplies store on Rosecrans, but the Aaron's supervisor picked the five hardest working? best? most industrious? least smelly? workers for another 4 hours.

     I cursed my small town work ethic and endured the four more hours of intense foot pain. It was a twenty-five man crew that started the day out, but the Labor Ready crack heads and winos walked off the job after two hours or so. We were down to ten or eleven men by lunch time.

     I called Mr. Lee at Scaife Protection Services this morning to tell him I had decided not to pursue employment with his (dubiously intrusive and unethical) company. I thought it was the correct thing to do. I tried to fax him an apologetic letter yesterday, but his fax machine wasn't working.

     I thought he would at least appreciate me letting him know, but the sonovabitch started lecturing me about proper procedure, telling me I should've said something at the interview, scolding me as if I was already his work slave, berating me as if I had stolen his lunch . . . on and on and on . . . and I just held my temper and thanked him off the phone.

     There's something wrong with that company. Everybody there smells of old socks and lost dreams. I was very proud of myself for not telling him to go fuck himself, his mother and his dog. He has too much personal information about me from my job application or I would've.

     Danette, the second to the last call girl I ever drove, called this morning out of the blue. She wanted to know if I would be available to drive her if she could get on somewhere again. She'd lost her car to the repo men and her latest driver/boyfriend has run off.

     I said 'sure', but I doubt if any escort agency will hire her on. She's already dabbled in the next step for call girls: street walking. It might not be too long before she's standing in front of my crack motel with the other crack hoes. Too bad. She was more honest than most of the girls I drove.

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Sunday, April 10, 2011

Primordial Americans: The Struggle Continues

Downtown Los Angeles as seen from my American ...Image via Wikipedia DEPT. OF THE SCREWED


     8:30 p.m. I'm in the Arco gas station getting cigs. A tiny Guatemalan woman, nearly a midget, driving a huge white cargo van pulls up. Nasty smell coming out of the new, pristine mammoth van. She runs into the station and asks me, asks the two clerks behind the counter, asks another customer, asks anyone who will listen if putting regular gas in a diesel-fueled van will cause mechanical problems.

     Not only that. She's lost. Been lost for hours. Put her last $20 into the diesel-fueled van's gas tank. Only she thinks she put regular gas in the tank. How does one know? Can someone come out and check the gas? She's trying to find the city of Bell where she should be with the van but after she put the gas in, the van stopped running well.

     Oh you're screwed, lady. Bell is a long, long way from here and I don't think this is your van.

     The big Arco clerk---the one whose fingers someone broke a long time ago for God knows what reason---looks into my eyes. She's screwed, his eyes seem to be saying to me, she might not make it out of this neighborhood alive.

     We feel sorry for her. The sun has gone down and the street's vampire shift will be starting mos riki tik. Soon the citizen-emptied streets will be filled with bicycle crack dealers, loobies, lubbards, macrogasters and goons.

     Across the street three sheriff's cars have pulled over a primer gray Mustang. While Broken Fingers is out sniffing the van's gas tank, the sheriff's deputies separate the driver from his Mustang. While the Guatemalan midget uses the Arco phone to get a cousin to come pick her up, the Mustang is towed off, leaving its driver standing in the church parking lot, obviously wondering how he is going to get home.

     The midget's cousin has never been to Gardena where the midget is trying to explain she lost herself. He's never even heard of Gardena, this garden spot of south Los Angeles. This we surmise from the midget's phone conversation. And her repeated question to anyone who will listen: 'Where are we?'

     The Arco station closes its doors in half an hour as a protection against robbery, murder, mayhem and wraith. The midget will have to sit outside in her self-disabled van for at least an hour, maybe two, while her cousin tries to find her.

     Maybe the ex-Mustang driver can keep her company.

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Same Old Toilet, Day In And Day Out



Had to wake up at 9 a.m. this morning to do the mandatory phone check-in with The House of Yahweh Food Bank for this afternoon's groceries.

9 a.m.!

They make you call in at 9 a.m. to reserve your free food pickup at 3 p.m. Reactionary do-gooders! My roommate had to wake me because I'd never wake up at that ungodly hour on my own.


Checked in with Sister Michelle to reserve my free groceries, paid my daily motel rent and walked across the vacant lot to the Arco station for coffee, cigarettes and to use the restroom.

Not that there's anything wrong with my crack motel room's restroom. I just like to go in different places once in a while. In fact, I'm getting a little weary of going in the same motel toilet every day. It's too predictable. I may have to rent a different room tomorrow. Same old toilet, day in and day out. I can't stand it.

Now that I'm all settled in at the Marquis, given a waiver on the usual 29 Day Rule (no motel room renter may rent a room more than 29 consecutive days), I'm getting restless. I want to move. I'm getting too comfortable.

I wouldn't even mind Kerouac's 'high stone john', the one he had to use in the middle of a Mexican village in "Lonesome Traveler." At least it would be something different. As I told Bobit Publishing in Redondo Beach when I quit them, "My ass needs diversity."


No, wait. That's not how I said it, exactly, in the newsletter-style resignation pamphlet I gave them when I quit that high tech, high-paying job. I think the pamphlet read: 'Reason for resignation: My ass itches.'

Yeah, that's what I printed, '
My ass itches.' They got the gist of it, I think.

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