THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 31 (CONCLUSION)

Today, on the first day of the week as well as the last day of the month, I woke up. I called my friend in Oregon and made my bed. Then I walked to Safeway for my weekly grocery run.

After putting away my groceries, I ate a couple of muffins with my morning coffee and watched the news on TV. The only subject of which was seemingly being reported was the evacuation of the Gulf Coast area because of the oncoming hurricane. Then I switched back and forth between two baseball games because the Giants were playing on one channel and the Red Sox were playing on the other.

After coffee, I was going to shave but changed my mind because I had Monday off and wasn't going to work for another two days, so fuck it, that was one routine that could be put off for now. It was Capitol Park's turn for my weekly go round, and the wind had kept the afternoon temperature much lower than it had been through all of the middle of the week, when it was hitting a high of over one hundred degrees each day.



I'm not sure if too many folks who've managed to retire from "urban camping" get to pass their old sites very often after they get off the streets, but that tends to happen to me more often than not. On my walk around Capitol Park, I pass a relatively nondescript area which served as a place to sleep, eat, read, write and otherwise provide a refuge, albeit not a very private one, from the constant migration required by the average homeless person thanks to the efforts of law enforcement and property owners and the like to keep said transients from sullying up the desired aesthetic purity necessary to impress shoppers and restaurant patrons from the suburbs and their money.

I look at those places today and can't help but realize that I have come a long way from where I was, even though currently I'm nothing but a working class stiff when the truth be told. When I actually was tramping through the streets of this city, I had no idea what I would become, much less any idea at all what the future would hold in envisioning any sort of clear picture of what lay ahead for me. I know what I liked doing, but I never had any sort of passionate desire to rise up or excel at anything in particular, even what I love doing the most. I never wanted a family, or lots of nice expensive things, or even a home of my own. I only wanted to be happy for just that day.

And you know what? I still feel that way today. For example, this weekend I had what many people, especially in today's technologically advancing, thrill seeking, material obsessed society, would consider to be a dull, uneventful and unremarkable 2 days of living. But in my estimation, I wouldn't trade those 2 days for anything. I was in control of all of my time, I was artistically creative, and I enjoyed my freedom and everything was all right.

No, everything isn't perfect in my life nowadays, but the universe itself isn't perfect either. No one who learns sees a perfect world, because if they did there would be no ability to continue to think about how to make even good things better. I am grateful to that universe for all of the experiences and wisdom it has given me, even (and especially) for the shitty stuff because without it I would not know what the good in this world truly is.

Back when I was living with a rather large household in South Sac about fifteen years ago, there was a guy living there who was 81 years old, and he would always end the various tales he'd tell us of his past experiences with the statement, "Yes, I've lived a full life. No regrets." Well, I can't say that I've gone 45 years without regrets, but on the other hand, each day that I awake nowadays, those regrets become more and more insignificant and have no bearing on the big picture that grows and becomes more and more complex in its full story.

I believe now that I need to take more evaluation into my own life, and a good way to do it is to measure it by the year, month, and even the week getting so exact as to contemplate each day briefly at its end. I have learned over time that the future does not depend wholly on the past and the now does not have to be dependent on either. I will try to remember from now on that time is the most valuable asset I have, and accomplishment, happiness and even simply the state of being are all simply residing inside it. I can't wait to see what lies ahead, both in this plane of existence and the next.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 30

God damn it! I just ran out of deodorant again! It's really not that big of a deal since I have a replacement in the cabinet, but I had just bought four of these fuckers in what seems like a pretty short time ago.

Once upon a time, I didn't bother with putting anything in my armpits at all, since I'm one of those guys who sort of enjoys regular daily showers and clean clothes and shit like that. However, that all changed about three years ago thanks to some fuckwad at my place of employment.

One bright and sunny morning, I was called into a private conference with my supervisor. At the time I was working at a call center and the workstations were in pretty close quarters. My supervisor informed me that he needed to advise me to pay strict attention to my personal hygiene. At the same time, he mentioned that neither the manager of the department or himself had any problem with me whatsoever. Translated, I had taken this to mean that someone was just trying to be an asshole and harass me. Later, my department manager had mentioned yet another complaint, but also pointed out that the person sitting behind me to my left was being complained about as well. In other words, he was trying to make it obvious as to who was doing the complaining, and in a kind of outside way, help me to pinpoint who was doing the actual complaining.

Fortunately, the person who I suspect was making the accusations is no longer working for the company. Regardless, I now have enough paranoia vested inside my mind to use de-stink product in my underarms daily. Thanks, fucker. Maybe I can take you to Small Claims Court and collect harassment damages for all of the anti-perspirant I've been blowing my hard earned dollars over for the past 36 months.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 29

Today, I was really thinking about shit.



I tend to be a pretty regular guy. This morning, just before leaving for work, I had my bowel movement at the usual time, just before eight AM or so. My digestive waste logs were not too dark, but a sort of charming rustic brown and surprisingly compact to almost a model of the pre-Big Bang universal mass, and with a weight capable of sinking it to the deepest depths of the toilet bowl.

Later, in the evening just before dinner, I had an encore of sorts, with the second resulting product of the same color and consistency as the first, but notably smaller than the opening act.



Although I never get very concerned about the nuances of my daily excremental output, sometimes I get frightened at the size, and fret as to whether or not my drains will be clogged by a particularly large load. Fortunately, I have never had any such problems and unlike some folks, I tend to be very conservative with my bathroom tissue use, though not to the point of failing to maintain a clean and hygienically pleasing asshole.

In a serendipitous way, I am lucky to have such a cramped apartment to live in. I can keep an ample supply of toilet paper literally right next to me as I sit. In the the event that my supply at hand empties, I can simply reach over for a fresh new roll, thus avoiding an awkward walk to a location with my pants down, searching for a replacement.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 28

You know, sometimes I think that I have too many shoes, and then I realize that I'm thinking that way because I only have two feet.

I tend to favor comfortable shoes as I get older that seem to expand in size as the years go by. I could have sworn that I had once upon a time been able to fit in size tens, but now I can't seem to be happy with anything other than a size eleven or at least ten and a half. I probably liked going to thrift stores more often back in the time and saw size tens that looked cool and figured that even if my feet got fucked up, at least I was stylin'.



Airwalks tend to be my favorite of late, even though I don't skate. I just like the combination of the comfortable fit and the lower price. They do tend to be flat soled, however, and flat soles will tend to fuck up my heels and arches if I walk too much in them.



For example, as much as I love my black Converse All Stars, when I wore my "Chucks" to San Francisco for three days, where I tend to hike around the (very hilly) city a lot, my feet paid the price dearly. My blisters developed blisters and my dogs were in some considerable pain for at least a couple of days after I returned home.



What I really should have worn to S.F. were a pair of my New Balance cross trainers, as those are the shit. I have a pair that I use for my weekly round-the-park walks and if I'm going by foot on errands and such. I have another pair of the exact same type (608) that I only wear indoors for the treadmill, and I've had those for close to four years now, and because I only use them on the rubberized track surface, they are still seemingly close to new. I must say from personal experience that NBs tend to last longer than any brands I've bought lately, and I even have an old pair of walking shoes that I still use to take out the trash and go on short walks around the corner to the store when I need to.

I don't have too many dressy shoes anymore, at least none that I wear too often. Dress shoes tend to be the ones that fuck up my feet the most so I tend to avoid them nowadays. I also have a pair of what you may call "dress sneakers", a pair of Reebok Classics that I haven't even worn outdoors for a single day yet. Ah, well, sooner or later I may get to wear them for some special occasion, like maybe if I'm hanging out with Scarlett at an Obama rally or some shit like that.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 27

Well, some of you folks like to put money into those there kooky 401(k)s and IRAs and the like but as for me, my financial future hinges upon a two dollar per week investment in the California Lottery Potential Fund.



I buy only one ticket per drawing, and there are 2 weekly drawings of the Super Lotto Plus game. I don't fuck around with the Mega Millions numbers because the odds are that somebody in another state is going to win on top of all the players here in California. Each time, I pick the same numbers, briefly plot out how I'm going to tell my employers that I'm quitting, and then every Wednesday and Saturday confirm that, once again, I have a losing ticket and will have to keep showing up at work.



In reality, I just buy the ticket and more often than not forget to even check the winning numbers until days or sometimes weeks later. I usually don't care that much about losing either, although I don't really get the idea pitched by the lottery's ad campaign that playing is somehow "fun" to do. I'm just trying to turn one dollar into at least several million, and at that point, I'll buy my own fun, thank you very much.

(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 26

Y'know, sometimes I say to myself, "I have too many hats." Then I realize that I am bald and say, "What the fuck would I think that for?"

Yeah, I guess if anybody asked me if I collect anything, I would say that hats are the closest thing to collecting something for me nowadays. I don't think I have that many right now, although I'd guess that I have about two dozen or so. I keep thinking that I am going to go out and buy some more, and extend my variety of choices past ball caps, but I haven't.



The plain black ball cap has been the style I've usually been wearing almost every day. I keep an older fucked up one for when I haven't showered yet or I'm going to be doing something that requires a bit of a sweat, and I have a newer and much cleaner one for normal wearing when my scalp is clean. I don't wear too many team caps anymore, but my neighbor gave me a Red Sox cap that he passed along from someone else.



I do have one hat that I like to wear frequently that isn't a ballcap style and that's a fairly old but durable Pendleton that I bought at the old Joe Sun store on K Street. I like wearing it when I want to be casual but a bit neater in appearance. In wet weather, I sometimes will put on this kinda goofy looking fishing style brim hat that I like to pull down low like that dude who used to be in that band with the chick who played Edith Bunker's niece in All In the Family.


I don't have too many formal hats, but I do have a top hat that ended up in this kooky music video I made once, and I also like to kick it occasionally in my Royal Stetson (pictured in the upper right corner of my blog page). But I also have a kind of outlaw lookin' leather concho that would fit right in, whether I'd be at a honky tonk or a Motorhead show.



Otherwise, I don't go out that much anyway nowadays, so hats have become less of a big deal to me. As a matter of fact, I don't think I had worn my wool watch cap for a single day last winter. Ah, well, I guess that's for the better, seeing as, especially when accompanied by a pair of shades, I look like I should be featured on Crime Alert or some shit.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 25

After my "early" Monday (less than two hours of overtime) I took a stroll over to the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op. I usually don't shop there very often except for some odds and ends, and in this case, I was running out of my supply of bath soap and they're the only store near where I live that sells Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap ("All-One!")



Of course, I use Dr. Bronner's not only for the fact that it's all natural and not only does a great job as a bath soap, but also I'm greatly impressed by the fact that its inventor was completely fuckin' nuts, coupled with the fact that over two million bottles are put out by four or five people with like, no automation. On top of those reasons, someone I used to work with put it best when she mentioned that one advantage to using Dr. Bronner's was that it's nice to have something to read in the shower.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 24

Today is Sunday, and the weather's warm, which means that I'm shaving today. Usually, unless there's something special or formal of which I feel the need to shave for, I usually only go for it once a week. I mean, usually during the week, the most important thing that I'm doing is working, so why bother otherwise?




I'm one of those guys who you'll see out and about around Sacramento with a shaved head, so my needs for equipment tend to be a bit more sophisticated than folks who just run a razor over their faces alone. I need a decent electric shaver, and I also need blades that are in good shape, because otherwise I'll have patches of stubble and fucked up burn marks in a lot of parts of my scalp. I brush all of the inner parts of my shaver out very meticulously, and as a result I tend to save a lot of wear and tear on my blades, not really needing to replace them but for every other year or so.



After a good thorough go-over with the shaver, I coat a decent amount of aloe vera on my head and other affected areas and I'm good to go. Luckily, a lot of my hair has fallen out and what's left is very soft because I only need to dump the whisker catch into the toilet and flush it away. If it can handle big ol' shits that people take, obviously it would have no problem with pulverized hair particles.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 23

Today, I was reflective, though certainly not nostalgic, about a former residence I had near 21st and Capitol. It's a big, flat empty lot now, and no, there wasn't any buildings there, at least not in 1991 when I was "urban camping". It had a number of trees and shrubs in the back half of the lot, the end which was to the alley between Capitol and L Streets.

Most of the time, I would stay up for the night and end up passing out for a few hours during the day in Capitol Park. There were some pretty sketchy fuckups who liked to wander around at night, and if they were going to try to mess with me, I figured that at least they'd have to attempt to take me out while I was awake.

When I felt like actually getting some evening shuteye, I had a certain spot over at Capitol and 21st right under some shrubs, and would cover myself with a large old section of canvas completely, so that I'd look like a collection of yard work waste all bundled up, and usually cops and the like would pass me by. A few times, I would be woken up the next morning by a leaf blower going off a few inches away from my head. I was sort of grateful though, because they would roust me up before 8 AM, and that's when Francis House would start serving the donated coffee and leftover pastries.

Francis House has been around since 1970. It's a resource and counseling center run by a sort of convoluted partnership between a bunch of local churches and the community. Back before the area over by 17th and Capitol got turned into State of California department buildings and the like, Francis House shared an area with the Central Downtown Food Basket. My usual routine was to go to Francis House on weekday mornings to hang out in a hassle-free area, and once a week after coffee and what amounted to my breakfast I'd go next door to the Food Basket and get a bag of groceries that I could pretty much stretch for the following week.

One morning, I was sitting there drinking my coffee and reading an old copy of the New Yorker when two Sacramento Police patrolmen entered the area and circled sorta vulture-like around me for a while. They then politely asked me to step outside with them and informed me that I was getting a ride downtown to have a little chat at the PD headquarters. I found out in the interview room from the detective that I was suspected in a homicide investigation. Fortunately, they figured out pretty quickly that I was not the guy who they were looking for. Unfortunately, the person who actually did kill this person is still at large and the crime has never been solved.

Flash forward 17 years later. Last night, there was a benefit for the Francis House featuring performances by Maria Muldaur and a whole bunch of other talented people and I missed it. Usually, I flake out on stuff like this because I am an anti-social asshole, but this time it was because I got all caught up on a bass track that I couldn't get right, mostly because my name's not Gabe Nelson and bass playing doesn't come very naturally to me and I need about 1438 takes to put it down. And usually I don't feel too guilty about missing stuff like this show because I love recording despite the frustration involved, but this time, because of the combination of the show being a benefit for a charity that's helped me get by in the past, and that Maria Muldaur, et al were probably going to put on quite a memorable performance, I was kicking myself pretty hard after the fact for missing out on going.



Since I had missed out on the benefit show, I decided to kick down a contribution online. Francis House has a link to a donation page run by Network for Good, a site which handles donations for all kinds of non-profits. I figured as well that the hundred bucks that I donated online would go directly to the charity, as opposed to shows which tend to have high overhead and thus, a smaller percentage of the money actually goes to the cause. But still, I have a feeling that Maria will be performing for quite some time and I'll just have to catch her at a future visit when she comes back to town. Hey, at least the goal of the show got through to me, and I didn't even show up.

So, how about you? I think that you need to give a donation to a local charity for the poor in your community, especially since the economy's so fucked up and even working people need to depend on food closets and other types of aid organizations to get by. I dare you. I double dare you. I triple dog dare you!


(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 22

24 years ago today, I arrived in Sacramento and, except for several weeks out of state, I have never left.

I've lived mostly in Midtown, but have also lived in Oak Park, Colonial Heights and even a short time in Del Paso Heights. I've lived in apartments, houses, a trailer, SROs, in Capitol Park, by the big ol' tree at 18th and Capitol and under hedges by 21st and Capitol. I've seen this city move up from a one horse hick town to, well, more people, more buildings and one more horse. Oh, and much better pizza than in 1984.

I celebrated my milestone tonight by laying down a keyboard track. Hey, you celebrate stuff your way and I'll do it my way.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 21

So I put in my latest request for time off today. It's going to be in about 9 weeks, and I took my last vacation about a month ago, but I wanted to get it in early to make sure I got the days off that I wanted. For starters, my co-workers need to cover me for the shit I do while I'm gone, and vice-versa, so I needed to put in for the week that was best for me. And besides, I'm always working around holidays when other people want to take their own breaks, so it works out for all involved.

I also prefer to get my requests in early because I am old and senile and tend to forget to do shit a lot nowadays. Case in point: I got home today, took a phone call from somebody I had not spoken to in a month or so, blabbed for about an hour, got on the treadmill, and after all that... suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to send out a report that I usually email out at the end of the day.



Fortunately, it wasn't that big of a deal, as I only had to walk a short distance back to work and send the already completed report out. If I were one of those lucky blokes who get the option to telecommute as an option, I could have done it from home, but although I have remote email, I don't have the file available from my home PC. Ah well, at least nobody tried to contact me to let me know that they were waiting for it, so they probably didn't really give a shit about it anyway.

(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 20

Ah, toast. Is there anyone out there who doesn't like an occasional slice of bread all burned to shit to some degree or another, and smeared with a favorite topping of one sort or other? Well, I tend to have four of 'em for breakfast at least once or twice a week.



The only thing I don't particularly like about toast in the morning is that it tends to be pretty labor intensive, and that can be a real time eater on a workday. I usually like my toast fix on a Sunday, but because I like to buy whole loaves of bread that get stale if I don't eat them within 5 days or so, I usually squeeze in one morning of toast during the week. There sure is something satisfying about a buttered load of toast with my morning coffee. Makes you feel like you almost cooked a meal or something.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 19

God damn, what a fuckin' beautiful day it was today! The sun was shining, yet the temperature was down to about 80 and there was a pleasant breeze in the air. It was a great day to get out and enjoy the world.

Unfortunately, I had to work today, so I couldn't really do that. But when I got home, in between eating dinner and Telecaster Therapy, it was also a great day to pass out for about a half hour or so. I didn't even have to run the air conditioning today, although I ran the fans to kind of de-stuffify the air a little. I would open the windows, but since I live on the ground floor and I'm old and senile, I'd probably forget to close them and regret it later when some crackhead is standing in my living room and I'd have to stab somebody. But still, being old also justifies my need to take naps. And it's like I've always said, the best way to escape the cares of the world is to fall asleep for a while. Nah, I've never always said that, I made that shit up and wrote it down just now.



(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 18

Oy vey! It's not like I've had any really bad days lately, but this one wasn't one of the better ones, either.

Ever have one of those days when everything is going better than you anticipated, and then, slam! Something has to fuck it up? Yup, that's my today.

It started out like any typical Monday with me anticipating yet one more overtime session. Yet in the first couple of hours, I was actually ahead of the game on my task list and had this kooky thought for a short while that I would - could it happen? - get out at my normal time, only eight hours later! Was this meant to be? Fuck, no, of course not!

Thanks to the weekend OS updates which are globally fixed by the nice folks handling our IT operations, my automated processes which spit out daily reports for the managers didn't happen on Saturday OR Sunday, and I wasted the good part of two hours dicking around with the database until I realized the the latest hotfix installation screwed up the object recognition, and now instead of my form running properly on my computer, it comes up with some bullshit error message saying that it does not recognize ' ' (i.e. it not only can't recognize the object name, it doesn't even see the name of the object!)

I have a feeling that the way that IT will want to remedy the problem is to upgrade my operating system, and that's all well and good, but then I'll have to back up all of my files and reinstall all of my programs and a bunch of little hassles thrown in as well. So to top it off, I ended up stuck there at work for three extra hours running reports, and although the overtime money is almost karmic considering that the Department of Bright Ideas decided to freeze our wages for a year, pulling that extra time isn't going to get me sent any thank you cards from my bosses.




And as an extra special bonus, when I was zipping up after taking a piss today, my fly kept getting jammed for some reason. After a closer look, I noticed that the inside lining was all torn up to shit! Fuckin' overseas outsourced factory work! I can't blame them, seeing as if I was treated as shitty as they reportedly are by their employer, I'd probably not care about how well I'd do on the job either.

(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 17

So I had caught some of the numerous news reports about the opening night at the California State Fair. Apparently, around closing time there was a bit of an altercation just a short distance outside of the fairgrounds and there was shooting and cops in riot gear chasing people around. It sounded like the fair this year was a pretty dangerous and violent place to be, so of course, my first reaction was, "Fuck yeah! I'm there!"

As it turned out, since my visit happened to be on Sunday afternoon, I didn't witness anyone being shot, stabbed, clubbed, maced or tasered, although the groups of young men in matching team colors of mismatched teams seemed to be growing in presence as the day went on.



The first thing that I usually do when I get to Cal Expo for the fair is board the monorail. I'll get the bird's eye view of what's where that way, even though in many areas it's the same old shit year after year.



I was kind of intrigued this time with the warning sign which is placed inside the door of the monorail seating area. "ALL OBJECTS AND BODY PARTS MUST REMAIN INSIDE TRAIN". Not "LIMBS AND HEAD". I'm wondering exactly what somebody may have flashed or hung over the side of the monorail in the past, possibly after one too many Bud Lights in the August heat. Even more disturbing is the thought that someone may have had said questionable part or parts seriously injured or even amputated by an unfortunate accident of some sort.

The midway was sort of dead, with many of the rides not even attended by operators. Perhaps things pick up at night when it's cooler or even Labor Day weekend just before the fair closes. The food concessions seemed by be pretty busy, but actually, it's kind of hard to tell if the fucked up economy we're experiencing nowadays is affecting the fair's attendance numbers or not.



The featured theme for this year's California State Fair has got a Hollywood thing going on, with a special exhibit of movie memorabilia such as Herbie the Love Bug, the DeLorean from Back To The Future, and the cart that Charlton Heston was hauled around in from Planet Of The Apes, among other sorta cool and nostalgic stuff. however, the whole shebang seems to be a way for Stage Nine, a local store of classic movie and cartoon related merchandise, to set up shop at the State Fair, because about one third of the exhibition hall was exactly that, a Stage Nine store. Folks seemed to be buying into it and grabbing up the classic star portraits, t-shirts and other such trinkets by the truckload.



The Stage Nine marketing stunt only amplifies the fact that the California State Fair has 2 slogans in actuality: The public slogan of "Big Fun!", and the private slogan of "Sell Lots Of Shit!" For those of you who have never experienced the dizzying Babylonian sensory overload that is the State Fair's shopping exhibit halls, just imagine every exhibit booth from every infomercial product, New Age fad and community service under one roof, and there you go. I wander around, take note of what they think that people are stupid and gullible to buy into this year and then it's out the door.

In the middle of all of the moneychanging chaos are the various county exhibits, with these elaborate displays in which, in state fair tradition, each county is attempting to show off why theirs is cooler than the other counties.



The Sacramento County exhibit was, erm, interesting to say the least. It was this towering assembly of some suggestively Yggdrasil kinda shit, with trees on the top layer with the upside down man made city structures on the bottom. The slogan at the foot of this assembly is "From The Ground Up, It's A Delicate Balance". Oh, okay. That's purty deep, yuh. Maybe, "It's The City Of Trees... And Developers" would have been more appropriate, and said pretty much the same thing.

The livestock areas sort of depress me. Seeing all these farm animals stuck in a cramped little pen with electric fans set up in a futile attempt to keep them cool almost makes it reassuring to know that most of them are going to end up on somebody's dinner table within a short time. However, the nearby trained seal show was fun to watch, even though it was pretty much the seals saying, "Okay, I've mimicked what you're doing, now gimme another piece of fish!"



Despite my usual level of cynicism, there are parts of the State Fair that I really enjoy seeing every time I visit, such as the art and industrial exhibits, which showcase the immense amount of talent in California's rank and file folk, especially from the youth. I would recommend to everyone visiting to make absolutely sure you check out those particular areas, and that way, when you read stories about the little thugs trying to brawl after the fair disperses at night, you can be reminded of what you saw in those craft and technology exhibits and remember that there are still kids out there who will have a bright and productive future ahead of them.

(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 16

Well, I had the whole day to myself and didn't have anything scheduled, so I ended up spending most of the afternoon beating off.



As in, laying down drum tracks, and I know what you were thinking, you fuckin' gutterbrained pervert.

I always feel like I never record or even practice enough, even when I end up spending most of the day doing either or both. Usually it's very rewarding and personally satisfying as long as I keep at it and don't spend too many days in a row without at least picking up something and playing it, or trying to write something and/or getting a snippet on a notepad or the portable cassette recorder to work on later.

I also had to finally get off my cheap ass and drop a few dollars on a headset amplifier because the last time I moved, I shook up the old one I had or otherwise fucked it up and ended up flushing thirty five bucks down the toilet. This time I plan on keeping the original packaging although hopefully I won't have to worry about moving very soon. I've been living in 4 different apartments in the past 5 years and god damn it, I wouldn't mind being in the same place for a few years in a row for once.

I took a morning stroll over to Metro Electronics over on 19th and J to try to snag the exact same kind of lil' amp unit that I had previously. As my crazy stupid brand of luck would have it, they had exactly one of them in stock, AND for the exact same price that I had paid for the first one 4 years ago! Stoked!



Oh sure, I could have gone to one of the electronic superstore monoliths for something that may or may not have been as dependable and may or may not have cost less, but whenever possible I like to be able to support the independently owned stores right here in Midtown, and basically tell the corporate chains, by way of my wallet, to go fuck themselves. Unfortunately, I may have to replace my wimpy ass headphones with a purchase from one of those big ass chain stores, but at least we're lucky enough to have some sort of choice for certain goods and services around these here parts.

(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)

THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™ - DAY 15

Oh joy! I received in the mail today my annual statement from the Social Security Administration!

For those of you living outside of the U.S. of A., we hard-working American peons receive a statement in the mail from the Social Security Administration once a year detailing how much we've paid into our skimpy Federal retirement benefits and how much our estimated payment will be. Or, if you believe the doomsayers, how much the government is going to fuck us for and not pay us when we reach retirement age, while making up some bullshit excuse about the funds running out and hoping that by then, we will be too old and feeble to run riot in the streets.

Looking over my estimated benefits, I can't help but feel anything but, erm, socially secure about the future. If I retire at age 62, for example, I could pull down a monthly Social Security payment of $725, i.e., jack shit. BUT, if I choose to keep working and stress myself out until age 70, that payment would double to a whopping $1450! And after I think to myself, "Wow! I'd only have to work eight more years and I could double my benefit", the next thought that comes to mind is the fact that the $1450 would be valued in year 2032 dollars. At 4% annual inflation I would need $3865 per month in order to live at the same rate as my age 70 retirement payment quoted today. Yes, that is fucked up.



Oh well, guess that I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if the horse is pulling out 6.2 percent of my paycheck and not promising that I'll ever see any of it when I actually do retire. So in actuality I should give the Social Security system, and Uncle Sam in general, a big thumbs up. And while I'm giving the thumbs up, I'll pretend that I am Australian.