So, I have now been twice reprimanded

by speaker systems at  gas stations.  The first incident was at a Circle K in 2007.  While living on Hermosa I was disgusted/elated when I discovered upon moving in that my neighborhood gas station was a place where fucked up shit was guaranteed to occur on each visit.

On many occasions while visiting the nearby dive bar, bums would call out to me from the dark recesses of behind and to the side of the Circle K demanding that I come have a drink with them while insisting I was their brother.

The poor place was always understaffed and thus it would fill to the brim with shitty people and because it took so fucking long for the attendant to ring up their lottery tickets and count out the change they were purchasing their cigarettes with; they became shitty, angry people.

I bought the 40 of Steel Reserve I drank before breaking my wrist skateboarding there, among other malt liquors, including the ones purchased that led to The Firewood Incident whereupon I was lectured via speaker in the gas station parking lot for attempting to purloin a bag of firewood.  Our fireplace didn’t even work.  We set our fires underneath couches when they contained a beehive.  The backyard. More specifically in the middle of the horeshoe pit.

For a while my housemate, Matt, and myself would light a fire in the middle of the yard and spend our evenings pitching horseshoes over it as well as swilling $9 boxed wine.  On one of these evenings our wood supply was dwindling as was the lamp oil in the tiki torches that bordered the flaming horseshoe of death.  Far too inebriated to drive to Walgreens for torch fuel, the solution I devised was to sprint to the Circle K for firewood and having worn my swimtrunks (there was also swimming involved in the wine/horseshoes/fire) learned I was lacking ID and card and cash as a result.

Unable to buy more booze and unable to pay the $7 or whatever the fuck for the bundle of wood, I hastily slung the bag over my shoulder and schemed to sprint back to Hermosa when I confronted by an iron voice informing me I was to put shit down.  Lackluster in my stride though still sprinting, I headed home where I resolved to ride my bicycle back, wallet in hand.

I arrived, secured my beach cruiser, and congratulated the attendant on his fortitude, urgency, etc.  After informing him that I planned to purchase the firewood in earnest, I was somehow allowed to purchase liquor despite the fact that I had been basically falling all over the parking lot and had just attempted to steal shit.  This will give you a great snapshot of that shit station.

We will now travel to the year 2010 and the site of the incident shall be a Chevron, so do not tell me I have not progressed.  One of R’s friends is a dj and he is frequently playing shows that are righteous and awesome and packed, but as a result of his profession he is also playing bullshit shows just to get paid.  Based on framing the evening around the event which is about to unfold at the Chevron station I believe right now you should be inferring it was one of the bullshit getting paid nights.

The bar was sparsely populated despite the penny beers but this could perhaps be explained by the fact that this bar is creepy as well as it was a ‘Bladder Buster.’  This is an event I have not participated in since the adolescence of my drinking career.  One may pay a small cover to obtain retarded drink prices which persist until someone has to use the bathroom.  As a man who enjoys urinating every hour whether binge-drinking or not, this does not really work well for me.  This night was no exception.

Unaware the drink special was a ‘Bladder Buster,’ I first arose to piss and found the bathrooms to be barricaded by some bullshit construction tape.  This confused and caused me to return to the bar to venture a query to the bartender who is a vague acquaintance of mine and quickly learned the nature of the drink special.  He informed me that I could easily duck out and return, however I informed him that I was simply wanting to piss for leisure and was nowhere close to ‘Busting.’

I returned to R and her friend in the bar area and proceeded to eat and drink tacos for another hour and a half.  After this time period, I decided that I had to piss and that the urgency was about to border insanity.  Due to my depressing, deliver driver-based knowledge of the metro-Phoenix area, I wisely schemed to bicycle west on 8th st to the Chevron station on the corner where porto-potties awaited me.  The Univega was unlatched from the gate I had secured it to and I was off.

Despite the fact I was becoming increasingly determined to relieve myself I none the less was meticulous in locking my bike when I arrived at the gas station.  Perhaps it was my pathetic sprint toward the porto-potties that drew suspicion from indoors…or perhaps it was just the fact that when I discovered the doors were padlocked I simply stole into the shadows and let it fly.

“Stop peeing!” an iron voice demanded.  It should now be noted that the description ‘iron voice’ is a nod to 1984 because it is one of those that drops the shit.  Public urination and/or theft is most definitely similar to government control of speech.  “Stop peeing right now and leave!” it reiterated and issued an additional command.  Oh, I stopped urinating all right, however I refused to leave and after hitching up my pants decided my time would be better spent airing my grievances with the owner of the voice as opposed to leaving.

“Who is the man behind the curtain?!” I shouted as I entered the premises.  Several customers in line turned at the sound of my voice and the employee proceeded to cower behind the fact that he had to do his job and finish these transactions before he would address me.  Luckily, I continued running my mouth and was promptly addressed with the benefit of the audience of the customers inside when I said:

“Dude, these bathrooms are open at the shittiest and most scumhole hours of the evening?  Why in the world are they locked at 11:12 p.m., bro?”

“There have been a lot of incidents…and she is leaving,” the cowardly attendant informed me, indicating some dower hog that was shuffling her ass out of the store while simultaneously and un-seductively removing her store uniform.

“What?  Is she the general manager or something?” I inquire, wondering whether or not she must be present for ‘incidents’ while also recalling how many ‘incidents’ I have seen there.  “May I lodge my complaint of your arbitrary closing of your restrooms with her?”

As I am speaking, the iron voice starts taping a sign on the door which reads ‘No Public Restrooms.’  Foul play!  I immediately dress him down for his hasty doctoring of the situation as he tries to explain to me that they have to close the restrooms when another employee leaves.  As the disgusting female co-worker exits, I continue shouting to the man about how he could have just told me this in the first place instead of being evasive and vague.  After offering to pay ten dollars for them to open the padlocks, I soon remember that I have to piss and hastily unlock the Univega so as to furiously bicycle to R and I’s nearby apartment where I begin to piss myself as I run up the stairs.

Having done a month’s worth of two people’s laundry that same day, I wash the violated pants in boiling water and soap while I smoke my pipe and sit on the side of the bathtub.

Further Orange Street Haikus

28
Standing at the desk
Drinking malt liquors and shit
Blessed be grandeur’s
29
We have met before
Words that are often exchanged
Between all the drunks
30
What will it all be for?
Shit, I should have rocked the weave
Is what the girl said
31
For unto the wise
Are rendered many a curse
When all are vacant
32
These bitches are drunk
And they are speaking riddles
And all are confused
33
Away and away
I hammer away at keys
When I can prompt it
34
‘I wore those all day
If you lean back you get big
Should have worn black, man’
35
Number sixty-two
In all numbers I have held
Count down until end
36
This is getting weird
Who knows what it will all mean
Definitions lost
37
What then holds the night?
Will it all end in morning?
I don’t really care
38
Not far from Orange Street
Though it does not feel the same
Now  we can pretend
39
Some day I will know
What everything has been for
And I will be dead
40
All dead and dying
Along this tragic train route
Explosions will come

It is interesting that I should be moved

to write when I am in this place and time.  Currently I am standing at a dining room table on my netbook wth multiple computer screens and laptops and general technology bullshit and cameras and greenscreens are surrounding me.  I do not give a fuck about the NFL and yet a friend of mine has asked me to participate in the production of a podcast he is engineering as a companion to Monday night football broadcasts.  I am to serve as a contrast to motherfuckers who watch ESPN all day.

I have recorded my second segment of green screen reporting.  Not even paying attention to the game and writing haikus on my word processor.  Having been in douchey plays and improvised and now currently in the stand-up foray I am beginning to think that this experience is a good omen for shit that is coming for me because it is only recently that I have realized the thing I actually give a shit about is storytelling.  That is not such a definitive thing to state, but it presses me onto unknown avenues I was presumed to be longing for in my youth.

Stoked I guess for the

fact that many things have been accomplished.

1)  After a week and a half at the shit hole apartment, a mail key has finally been obtained.  As I entered the standing room only leasing office that smells like incense and sweat, “Rosie” interrupted what appeared to be prospective tenants who sat in front of her desk mid-sentence to address me and ascertain my concern of that day.  Opposite her flustered defensiveness I experienced during my previous forays to the leasing office that had manifested from her inability to explain why she could not do her fucking job nor determine when it could be done, this morning I found Rosie to be helpful and prompt.  Even though for the past week and a half she had huffed and puffed and blew her shanty slum $530/month apartments down telling me she had “no idea when mailman was expected” and that “somebody might stop by your place today or maybe they might not and then I don’t know,” today she simply handed me a key from a pile after I confirmed the apartment number.

One would think that after a week and a half that there might be something awaiting me, even something shitty like the rest of our Cox bill or a student loan balance, but all that awaited was a green piece of paper asking us to identify ourselves.  Above the mailbox was a handwritten note advertising a “GR8 Vacum” that you could obtain for $40 if you contacted ‘Kevin.’  One wonders whether to lampoon Kevin’s spelling or his assumption anyone that lives in this shithole which requires no security deposit would spend two Jeffersons on a secondhand v-a-c-u-u-m.

2) I am OFFICIALLY unemployed.  My sparring with the bureaucrats at the wAZUI has officially come to an end and I am finally able to collect the $150 a week I can thank Silvermine and the taxpayer for.  My attempts to collect this pittance during the latter half of May and the majority of June were wrought with peril.  The necessary materials did not arrive to me in the mail for over 2 weeks and at this point I quickly learned that the Arizona Unemployment Office was simply a man behind a curtain-a man who is staring at 421735957585319 phone lines that are all on hold.

In addition to the number being busy for 12 hours a day, on all occasions when I would finally get through to an agent they would prompt me to “reset my pin”online.  After informing them that their online system tells me there is nothing I can do outside of call this 602 number to resolve the “status of my claim” they would then “transfer me” to somewhere I could reset my pin which actually just brought me back to the main touch-tone telephone menu where I had started like fucking 40 minutes ago or some shit.  Sometimes the automated voice will decide when you have had enough of holding and after sitting through ringing, eventual connection with the automated touch-tone system, entering all the information through the automated touch-tone system, it will inform you that it is best that you call back later and fucking hang right up without giving you the option of whether or not to act on the suggestion it just gave.  Once the voice estimated my hold time would be 743 minutes.  It is over now.

3) I took my car in to get the alignment adjusted and found out I must get $220 of repairs first in order for the alignment to last.  Oh, shit, 2/3 isn’t bad, I guess.  At least I know where my first $150 i

s going.

Further Orange Street Haikus

17
Bum slept on the ground
Narrow gravel bed and shade
No one wonders why
18
Lucky Devil closed
Good.  Bad.  But for the better
Of my self respect
19
The lucky nineteen
As I always tend to think
Tell me otherwise
20
To play Spy Hunter
Or to shower before two
One could have it worse
21
Nearly lost freedom
For tacos and leaves of grape
Beginning and end
22
Not sure what to do
Vodka and aloe vera
Down the throat and pore
23
Castles built on sand
And worries of future coin
Intangible stands
24
And, please, tune me in
Motherfucker opposite
Can’t even hear this

Catering Company

Obtaining a job washing dishes at a restaurant that was adjacent to my barber shop due to my barber’s personal introduction of myself to the owner and his giant Hawaiian wife was an example of the extent of seventeen year-old Trevor’s networking skills.  After selling timeshares for four days, I was more than happy with Mike the Barber  taking the same amount of care of my pocketbook as he had, for years, my coif.
An awkward incident occured less than five minutes into my newly earned, under the table compensated position as a dish washer.  Rick K***** looked like Beetle Bailey should he have been wearing a shaggy, white toupee.  Despite the fact that his wife was foreign, he made it inadvertantly clear to me less than five minutes after meeting him that he did not trust other certain varieties of foreigners.
Aside from myself and his morbidly obese Hawaiian wife who probably used to be pretty fucking hot in her day (though it is interesting that I would have assumed at one point she was thin as opposed to simply always having existed as a really motherfucking fat woman with a beautiful face), the only other employees aside from myself were two Mexican brothers named Omar and Edgar.  Rick K***** freaked the fuck out whenever they spoke to eachother in Spanish, apparently.
“What did I tell you about that!” he bellowed.  And, yes, I omitted a question mark for a reason and that reason is because Rick K***** did not ask this, he declared it.  Soon, I would learn that he acted like this regularly despite the fact the brothers had worked for him for years and even had keys to the place in order to make early morning and/or late night preparations for catering orders.  Dude was hella paranoid and assumed Omar and Edgar were plotting against him instead of dutifully busting their asses for him for most likely borderline jack shit.
This would occur even with…

August 5 is exciting

This morning’s highlight was a random as fuck call from my “job” informing me that I was to return to my labors on Tuesday the 24th of August and that I would be receiving a raise.  This was perplexing though acceptable as I was last told by them to perhaps call around the third week of August to obtain my marching order for the next cycle in production.  More money faster is okay, I guess.
Sitting on hold with the unemployment bullshit was tedious as a motherfucker.

August 4

When I hear Levin and Hannity rail on and on about unemployment offices, I imagine they are actual places.  Not in Arizona.  I would fucking love to sit in an unemployment office all damn day listening to my iPod and rocking my Air Force 1’s.  In Arizona this office is a phone number.
All the better.  Instead, I sit on hold at my kitchen desk with the miserable elevator music on speakerphone and a shrill, electronic female voice that that will thank me for holding every so often.  The voice sounds exactly like the shrill, electronic female voice that my Blackberry omits.  God knows how many times my co-workers in neighboring stalls have heard this digital woman bellow “SAY A COMMAND!” when I am manipulating it in/out of my pocket and accidently push the voice dial or whatever the Hell button as I perform an app’n’crap (using Blackberry while taking a shit).
If I were in some government office with it’s rigid, coarse furniture and elementary school-looking carpet, I would be predisposed to read the Newsweek magazines that the internet makes obsolete.  Ironically, from my current post our wifi has yet to be connected so the internet that I have just praised actually eludes me and I wouldn’t mind a current Newsweek.  At least I can smoke and drink High Life and listen to outdated podcasts or music or some shit or maybe just read crap on my phone.  Not sure how this all adds up.
Some character is purportedly en route to inspect my beach cruiser with the aim of pending purchase.  God damn it if Craigslist commerce has not reached it’s feverpitch here over the past couple weeks.  Already sold Playstation, skateboard rail, iPod shuffle, and the Death Cruiser represents my last current posting.
I haven’t told anyone who has come to inspect the Death Crusier that I almost died riding it and for some reason decided to spend $40 mounting a new rear tire and chain in order to engage in some sort of sick excercise in which I triumph over the vehicle unable to render itself effective as my assassain.  Some skinhead with mad shitty tattoos came over to ‘check it out’ yesterday.
“How did this happen?” he asked as he pointed to some huge-ass dent.  Instead of saying ‘A fucking car going 42 miles per hour!  Driven by Sharon P******* who is trying to sue me for $4,390something!’ I went with ‘I have no idea, dude.’  The skinhead endlessly scrutinized the thing demanding to know whether or not I had applied certain decals or if they were, in fact, originally ‘stock.’  Also, he demanded to tool around with it in the shit parking lot next to the courtyard my apartment overlooks.  it is always interesting to see how men react to you holding a door open for you, and the skinhead did not disappoint when he freaked the fuck out as I held open the gate.
This dumb motherfucker rode around in circles, carefully dodging all the trash strewn about in the parking lot, for several minutes.  Enough minutes to the point where it felt awkward to just be standing there holding the u-lock while watching the Nazi peddle about in silence.  When I was in 3rd grade and decided that I wanted to read fucked up shit about World War II, I thought that the National Socialist Party and the Nazis were two separate things.  Would have been a lot more fucked up, I suppose.
“It’s pulling to the right,” Gestapo Gerald announced, “Don’t you notice it pulls to the right?”  He finally stopped the meticulous peddling and approached me pushing the bike as he walked beside it, thus giving me a sick view of all the retarded tattoos on his bicep which appeared as though the artist had chewed up a bunch of dogs, military imagery, tribal, etc. and threw it up EVERYWHERE.
‘The front fork is bent,’ I said, ‘For the past couple weeks I have been fucking around with it, tooling around the neighborhood and so forth and this has not bothered me.  Point A to Point B Bullshit, you know?  Would be like $30 or $40 if you wanted to fix it.’
Forgetting the pittance I was requesting for the bicycle which retails at $180 brand fucking new, Schuttstaffel Sam began to ramble at length to me the details of several other bikes he was considering.  Ironically, I would sell the Death Cruiser today for $60 which is what I offered the Nazi yesterday in desperation as he had been the 3rd or so person to meet me in person and I didn’t want to do this bullshit anymore.  Instead of either accepting or declining my offer, the Nazi continued to tell me about his potential bicycle options.
Today’s customer I apparently kept waiting in one of the parking lots adjoining my shit hole apartment for approximately a half hour.  Rather than calling me (we had already exchanged numbers), this man decided to angrily sit in his car with his feeble teenage son and sweat in the hot, hot heat.  Perhaps he was punishing the boy for some transgression and this bicycle purchase-pending sauna manufactured in his blue Durango was to be today’s round of torture.  Preferring this to yesterday’s “football practice” which involved his father blowing a whistle at him while he did up downs and ultimately engaging him in anal intercourse while simultaneously force-feeding him weight gain powder, the boy sat in the car dutifully.
When he finally emailed me to inform me he was in the parking lot in a Blue Durango, he was not, in fact, inside the Blue Durango and was instead poking around the courtyard where the Death Cruiser was locked.  As I approached the Durango and the window descended, I was greeted by the pimply little fuck who was manipulating the driver’s side window by awkwardly leaning across the center console as well as seat still warm from his dumb father’s ass.
Rather than telling me anything, he simply pointed behind me indicating his rosey faced father who was pacing around the courtyard angrily with his non-fitted hat and Oakley m-frames…

Orange Street Haikus

Orange St. Haikus

Composed since the first of August on my then crippled netbook as I awaited the installation of wifi.  Now, the world may behold their genius/shit.

1
Yesteryear has passed
Arabs give laundry room tips
Pass the torch to ’10
2
Mounds of trash are strewn
Odds and ends, trespassers seek
Matteresses and cups
3
Awaiting wi-fi
Stuck now in the definite
Cyberspace eludes
4
Interpret the sky
Virginia Sims plumes fly south
Gross natives downstairs
5(1)
Old man in 5-9
Rides bike in and out all day
Drinks soda and sweats
5(2)
Monday saw him shout
Old woman by the light rail
Yelled, straddled his bike
6
Should have bought more beer
Completed the laundry, sure
Though it was sorrow
7
Should have bought more beer
AZUI: speakerphone
And I sit on hold
8
Man carries lightbulb
Praying at dumpster altar
They all get their take
9
Forlorn man and dog
The hound trumps him in spirits
The gleam still present
10
Wasted teenagers
Cannot make sense of crosswalk
They should die tonight
11
Two pounds of turkey
Eighty-eight cent bread, mustard
Now the King is dead
12
Got to load the bong
Hard to port, Mr. Starbuck
Ishmael and shit
13
Rina dries her hair
Yeah, the living room is loud
Collect the chess board
14
Gathered on the ground
We shoot the shit and drink beer
Laughter all the time
15
Christ begs me: press on
His scowl overlooks me
He is from Cyprus
16
At a fever pace
Want to take off my shoes, man
Sure thing, let’s do it
17

Finally have motherfucking wireless

up in the creepy new digs.