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41

Fuckin’ neck kinks! How fucking stupid are they?

And the timing is excellent. I get my first job call in weeks (bonus points if you can tell me why i have so much trouble finding work). The very next day, a $3,600 transmission problem shows up in the truck with ticking lifters some white trash guy sold me and didn’t tell me about (cue white trash grin all the way to the bank). The very next day, out of the blue, I’m stabbed in the back of the neck and can’t move my head. This is me right now minus the contraption.

Lol, this is like epic spring fail number five. Since I’ve gotten out of prison, every winter I’ve planned to do something fun when spring came around… and every time, something fucks it up. This time i was certain. By May, I’d be surf fishing and camping and all that shit. Even bought the laminated salt-water fish sheet that’s got all the rig illustrations. Pinned it over my dresser so i would see it every day.

Nope. You ain’t goin’ fishin’ this spring either, pal. What you’re gonna do is sit on a cat lady’s couch with a broken truck all summer and watch serial killer videos.

42

Here’s the thing. I could use the Escalade for work, but it too has issues that i haven’t resolved yet. It’s driveable, but a magneto sensor in the cam is bad, and i can’t be sure driving it won’t make shit worse. That and the radiator leak caused by someone puncturing the radiator a couple years ago. Vigilante or stalker, can’t be sure. But this one was a scam, too. The trash that sold me it knew about the cam but didn’t tell me. He had found out about the prob, couldn’t afford the fix, and so tried to sell it to some sucker (moi) on craigslist.

Yesterday, i put my Schecter and amp for sale on craigslist. Five minutes later, i get a scam text. Guy will send a check, and somebody will pick it up, etc. Goddamn man, the scum that this society produces duddint waste any time, does it? Fuckin ad wasn’t even up five minutes.

I feel like I’m in some kind of nighmare world, bro. Yeah, I’m gonna have to go ahead and put a stop to this nonsense.

43

Oh! And i made a terrible mistake, too. A few days ago i was hacked, and some mystery purchase was declined by my card (the purchase amount was more than i had. If they had bought something cheaper, they may have gotten it). So i called the bank to kill the card and get a new one sent… but i forget to post my service ad on craigslist before the card was killed… and now i won’t be able to post it for at least a week (the time it takes to get the new card). Boy you fucked up.

44

Lol wtf.

Joe: can’t we take the truck?

Me: no, i got beat by the guy i bought it from, and it’s broke down.

Joe: Escalade?

Me: Nah, can’t drive it. Somebody poked a hole in the radiator.

Joe: what about that white Nissan you had years ago?

Me: lost it to the tow company when i was jailed for crimes i didn’t commit and I couldn’t get out to save it in time.

Joe: family didn’t get it for you?

Me: nah, they won’t help… they all think I’m a pedophile.

Joe: damn dude, hope you don’t end up in a shelter.

Me: nah, homeless shelters don’t allow SOs in.

Joe: bridge then?

Me: nah, if it’s not a legitimate address, I’ll be arrested and imprisoned for at least eight years (per statute).

Joe: are you shittin’ me? What did you do?

Me: flashed someone. Okay, a few people.

Joe: what do you mean… like shot em with a laser or something?

Me: they saw my penis.

Joe: they saw your penis?

Me: yup. With their eyes, in fact.

45

Now that’s good writing. The reader is immediately pinned to the mat. Nothing more even need be known if only that much is understood. You stare at it but can’t say anything. First you are angry… angry that a scumbag has made a meal out of you on a philosophy forum. Next is the fatigue… you look back over everything you hold dear and have faith in, and all you see is the dark looming figure of me grinning at you. Maybe you’ll go silent for a couple days and then try to slide into some thread at ILP to get your weekly fix of pointless conversation with half-baked strangers. Where you can believe and have hope and faith again with the others. He’s out of sight and out of mind, finally.

… and I’ll be goddamned if the scumbag doesn’t show up again.

I have killed your gods, your leaders, your philosophies, and now you too are slowly dying.

46

“That wasn’t an actual conversation?” (laughing) was my reaction once I realized that it wasn’t.

…so I guess you could say you killed me, sure.

You should trade in both vehicles for one that actually works. Skip maintenance. Stop being an asshole to your mom if she owns one of them, and try to buy one she can actually get in without struggling… so you can drive her to her appointments which she will make around your schedule.

Suck it up and get an hourly job so she can do that. Lots of places hire felons. You could always go back to what you were doing before once you’re in a better position to do that.

Fishing. Damn straight. If you got your mom that deep tissue massager for Mother’s Day you wouldn’t have neck kinks, just saying.

47

“You should trade in both vehicles for one that actually works”

Can’t and wouldn’t if i could. I’ll get a hunerd thousand more miles out of the Escalade before that engine quits. That 6.2 will run for eons and i can use it for work (pull a trailer) and pleasure.

It’d be like giving up 403 Clydesdale horses and who in their right mind would do that?

“Stop being an asshole to your mom if she owns one of them, and try to buy one she can actually get in without struggling… so you can drive her to her appointments which she will make around your schedule.”

I’m sorry, but are you thinking the cat lady owns one of my vehicles?

She has drivers if she needs them as part of her medicare thing.

“Suck it up and get an hourly job so she can do that”

I resolved to never do that again after a) losing a civil suit in court to an employer that owed me wages and b) being fired and/or treated with awkward suspicion by employers and coworkers who were told by the State that I’m a child molestor when doing background checks.

48

Get a list of employers that hire felons and only apply to them. You know why you lost that lawsuit.

Don’t expect people to feel sorry for you (or think you think rationally) if you’re not going to get vehicles that work, or drive the ones that work that you already own.

I can’t imagine why you’re wasting time on this conversation if it’s a load of crap.

49

“Don’t expect people to feel sorry for you (or think you think rationally) if you’re not going to get vehicles that work”

No, you simpleton. This is an existential story about a working class joe getting out of a french prison and getting cheated twice in a row by private sellers on craigslist. I don’t even regret it and am still satisfied with both buys. The truck has paid for itself more times than i can count and my Exscalade ain’t even left the gate yet, bruh. Seriously though, would you?

50

I don’t click on your links. Somebody else did twice, though. Prolly you.

No, you’re right. Prolly owns both.

51

See, that’s the reason no sirius interaction with you is possible. If you don’t even believe me when i tell you i own my own cars, you sure as shit won’t believe anything else I tell you and fuckin with you is a waste of time.

But you’re only used as a dummy for philosophical crash tests anyway, so nothing is lost.

52

Maybe you should use your two vehicles for philosophical crash tests? Then there would be a point to you owning them.

53

But look at how shit works out. If it weren’t for this godforsaken kink in my neck, I’d have given none of these lessons in the past couple of days, and you guys would have experienced no deep introspection.

Fuck no you think I’d be on this couch all day fuckin witchu people? I need to get a gotdamn job if muhfuckas would call me. Wtf.

Lost one yesterday though. Homegirl had some decent chimney siding rot but I can’t carry the ladder on the Acura. I’m like damn.

54

Not to be rude, but you pronounced, “A banana is packed full of vitamins, but on a glacier it is very slippy” wrong.

55

About me being a dick. It’s not what you think. When Aries or Thor or whoever drop out of the sky and land in that superhero one-knee-down landing with their hammer and this yuge shock wave ripples out and all the houses 'n shit get blown to bits… they aren’t there to attack the villagers. They’ve only landed… and that’s what happens whenever they land somewhere. You can’t get around it. But to call this malevolent is misguided. It’s just that they discharge an incomprehensible power that naturally disrupts and damages everything around them.

56

A bit on construction worker life spans, peripatetic philosopher tradesmen, psychosomatic effects of climate and the beginnings of civilization

This was a convo attempt with the cat lady.

57

That’s why i profess a return to pre-mercantile barbarism. Precisely to avoid this problem. The overcomplicated nature of civilization management coupled with final metaphysical nihilism should be enough already to produce a post-modern version of the noble savage. It is only because man has become too easily contented and is too good at acclimating and adapting that he hasn’t yet been pushed into this abyss, i believe. Man is essentially an inexhaustable pack mule that has learned to be content with walking very slowly only because it is so overburdened.

58

Really? That was your best attempt at pronouncing that word?

You were talking to yourself. She had absolutely nothing to say about what you said. If she was even there.

If I had been in that room, I would’ve had something to say. And I already said it.

But you know what I like best about that conversation? You didn’t call her a bad name. It’s kind of weird how you call her man and dude … but not as weird as how you try to pronounce peripatetic.

Next.

59

I wasn’t lookin at the word when I tried to pronounce it. I was going on an old vague snapshot I have of the word in memory from seeing it before. I looked it up afterward to put it in the title.

How’d you like that stumble at government structures? Like the stoner that’s trying to sound intelligent but can’t find the words so he starts to go quiet and put his hands in his pockets as his friends pretend like they didn’t notice.

60

Lemme tell you something about roughneck construction workers (if i may indulge myself for a moment).

A trained fighter has confidence particularly in his fighting skills, and he develops these through training. His physical rootedness, the anchor of his confidence, exists only insofar as he feels an advance in his abilities and skills as a fighter. And this only advances insofar as he trains. There is, therefore, a dependency on the feeling of improvement for there to be sustained confidence.

The roughneck construction worker, on the other hand, isn’t rooted in his confidence as a fighter but as a relentless laborer who trains daily by necessity. He would go into a fight feeling more solid than a fighter. A framer for 20 years or more, for example, will have forearms and especially hands that are like hydraulic vice grips. He’s not bragging, not overconfident, not overestimating… he feels this as certainly as he feels how simply he lifts a beam or grasps a hammer. He is confidence personified while the fighter has to gather and earn it through extra effort in training.

There’s brute obstinance ingrained in the will of the roughneck construction worker might be a way to put it. He knows only the force of labor, the digging in, the grit, etc.

You put two men of equal size in a ring, let one of them be a residential framer of 20 years and the other a [insert fancy style] fighter, unless that fighter subdues him immediately that framer is gonna make quick work out of em. Every time. He’s got too many years on the gun for this fighter to go the distance. These guys don’t quit, man. They start young and can hardly push up a rafter. In a year, their climbing walls and slinging plywood on roofs for eight hours straight. Worked with a mexican kid decades ago who had arms like wires and veins twisted into braids. He could run two bundles of shingles up a ladder faster than your fighter could come down that ladder empty-handed. Animals, bro. Different breed of man. Impervious to pain almost. There are no gyms and smoothie bars here.