I GAVE IT ALL AWAY

[legman open to offers]

Good luck on your fresh start Rope

[A rope leash]

Thanks, legman...that's very kind of you. How's it going in Tex-ass?

Hot and wet, I presume.

It's getting ready to rain here in California, the first rain in a while. I've been looking for work all this past week, and it hasn't been real. There's something about looking for work online that isn't solid. I've made a few in-person visits to temporary agencies and I've found that they are either not taking appications, or are only taking certain applications, or they have gone out of business. Not funny.

It seems that I have also come across a catch-22. As you may know, much of my work history has involved driving, and I depend on my driver's license and good record to help me land a job. Now, clearly, if I'm going to get a driving job in California, I'm going to have to get a California driver's license. That's no problem...but the minute I do that, I have to register my vehicle...Ford Probe Wonderful...

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...which is never going to pass California smog. If it can be done at all, it will cost me a bundle that I don't have.

Sucks.

Who will buy?

[bambooneedle]

...and I'm sorry, Bamb...but no one decides what is funny. "Funny" strikes. You laugh or smile or you don't. One can only decide afterwards if it is appropriate.

You decide BY whether you laugh or smile or not

Also, I cannot see how one can change what "sorry" or "feel" is. These words have definitions, and while we may alter the connotations for our personal uses, we cannot change the denotations. Any changes made upon these words will only make sense to the individual making the changes, and any such reinvention will be simply personal, and quite moot. In short, I don't understand what you are saying. Wherever I go, there I am, and I am what I am, even after reinvention.

By decide I don't mean changing the meaning of the words, but decide from what they can mean. These words are subjective. Don't tell me what's what, was what I was hoping to convey. And also a bit about reinvention much like a young kid or anyone coming to terms with new language and ideas plays with the malleability of their world, since you again put across your seemingly perfectly intact weary world view where we are all still primitive and wretched etc, and you were so bored.

Good luck on selling your car and getting the work you want. I was thinking you might be going to California to go to Hollywood to peddle your wares - to sell some of your writings... or to visit Mr Average...

[A rope leash]

Now it makes sense and I see what you are saying. Laughing is sort of a spontaneous decison, isn't it?

Naw, I've never been able to sell any of my wares...it's a poor pipe dream at best, and a little like wishing for a nighmare. I've come to believe that I wouldn't want that kind of fame and fortune, anyway, even if it did by chance come along. I've got to think that with the billions of people on this planet there must be several thousand unknown but pretty good writers out there, just as there are surely some pretty fantastic musicians that no one has ever heard of. Corporate-style fame is a combination of talent, luck, and who you know. I have to write for myself.

...and I might as well, because the jobs don't seem to be coming along. The wage is about the same here as it is back in the Midwest, but the rents are three times higher. I'm mooching off of my ex, and she's not digging it much. It won't be long, I suppose, before I'm headed back.

Maybe I'll stop by Mr. Average's and mooch some there.

You know, two-thirds of the world's population lives outside of the "normal", capitalist-style legal and business systems. I might well wind up homeless, but there's absolutely nothing unusual or shameful in that.

It's just a pain in the ass, that's all.

Have a good one, Bamboo...

[Neil.]

Watch 1930s and 1940s Cary Grant and Fred Astaire films. Also, Laurel and Hardy films. It's impossible to find life unbearable when you're watching them. That's all I'm gonna say on this!

[A rope leash]

Thanks for attempting to cheer me up, Neil.

I've been a fan of those old flicks for many years now. There's an innocence to them that the world has forever lost.

Those old movies are often credited with having kept up the spirits of the population during the Great Depression. No doubt they did...and it's approporiate to suggest that they might cheer me up at this point in my life, because I really feel that we are in a depression, and the worst is yet to come.

The rate of unemployment in California is nearly 13%...and that's just what the government says, and they mostly only count people who are drawing insurance benefits. The true number is closer to 20%, and many that are working don't make diddly. The nation has lost like 7 million jobs just since the first of the year...and the world is shying away from dollars like they might carry a virus. People in this country are not buying much of anything...another year of this and the retail business will falter, and we will really begin to see desolation on par with what we had in the Thirties.

Ah, the joys of capitalism. Get ready to be hungry.