reality bites

[mellowtigger]

I got exactly the opposite of what I wanted.

I spent Saturday on diversions.  I played computer games.  I harvested some lime-basil from the garden to make a non-alcoholic margarita.  I avoided news websites.  I went downtown for the bar night of the Minneapolis Movie Bears, which I had not attended in many months.

• At the bar, some poor guy came up to me and offered to sell me some shoes for $5.  I declined.
• In the bus on the way home, I sat near a guy around my age with a face smeared in blood from a busted temple, cheek, and lip.

The bloody guy was talking to someone else, so I wrote it off as "non-urgent".  A concerned couple of parents offered him some sanitation wipes they had for their young child, but he declined.  He rode a long way on the bus, nearly to the end of the line.  We happened to get off at the same stop.  After we were both on the sidewalk, I finally asked him, "So, do you need any help getting to wherever you're going?"  I didn't understand much of what he said, but I did hear, "See, what happened was, somebody killed my mother."  He declined the assistance.  He seemed to know where he was headed.  So I walked the rest of the way to the house where I rent a room.

I learned earlier this year (overhearing conversation where I was eating a meal at a fast food restaurant) that you make money off of stolen credit cards by visiting gas stations and selling people gasoline at half price.  You take their cash, and you use the stolen card to pay for the gas at the pump.

I'm learning much too much about how to survive a broken economy.  You can't convince me that America isn't circling the drain.  Actual misery keeps showing up ever closer to my "front door".  I blame Republicans for intentionally bringing us here, and I blame Democrats for being too chickenshit to ever face grim and messy reality.

I'm still hoping for my vacation from this sad future racing toward us.