new americans

i walk home on saturdays
we are now a two car family but i prefer the walk after a 6 day work week
a way to slow down for sunday
to stretch the afternoon out get a bit more juice from the sun catch up on phonecalls

so i’m walking home right
and this is p*** a**** i mean you know
its houses and cars
and property values and sticker prices really
so i try to look in the windows of the houses see who’s who see who uses blinds who doesnt
and i stare hard i mean
maybe they think im casing the joints i stare hard

so i’m hard staring today and i hear
‘so here’s what id like to do’
and i look to my right and i’m close to a condo building with a below ground driveway
and theres this indian guy with bags of concrete in his hands and a doped up looking mexican

and hes saying ‘so heres what i’d like to do’ and the doped up guy is looking at me and staring
and hard staring me like i was hard staring the property values
and hes wearing ablack hoodie
and the indian guy is wearing a white button up tucked into his dockers
and he’s gesturing at the doped up one
(why can i write indian and not mexican here?)
and he’s showing him what he wants
and i glance into the driveway below the ground

HOME DEPOT
RENT THIS TRUCK BY THE HOUR

and i recall this weeks trip to home depot and earlier trips when we first arrived in california

and i saw the men in the parking lot of home depot
waiting
waiting for work waiting for some indian in dockers to pick him up and rent him by the hour

i’m insured.

i am now an american with insurance
i can’t claim to be one of the 750,000 folks in california without any coverage
i’m secure enough at this point in my life to pay $109/month for health insurance with a high co-pay
i haven’t had insurance since 2000
and it feels kinda strange

i went to urgent care last week
the day after my insurance got activated
i didn’t have to hand over the usual $300 deposit to get seen

a THREE HUNDRED DOLLAR deposit for a doctor to look at you
even if you’re blue in the face
it’s sick
and wrong
and gross
and evil

but i don’t have to deal with that anymore

if i added up all i have spent on medical care, per year, since the year 2000
it would be less that what i will pay this year in insurance premiums
i have been lucky
but right now i’m paying for piece of mind
and to stop the homeboy’s frequent harrassment

i’m insured
no more joking with the pharmacy tech at walgreens about sending bush my medical bills
no more bantering in liberal circles about the dearth of free health care in this country *really* affecting me
i am no longer part of that class

and it feels weird

burke, through vachss, said:

gunfire crackled like heat lightening on streets where the franchise to distribute rock cocaine was disputed by teenage robot-mutant millionaires.

don’t try to find it

it’s gone
the old blog is gone
things were closing in

so here we are
at wordpress en lugar de ______________
aka site i will not name

ok has been reading more lately
which means i have been reading more lately

to read a book over and over again and constantly forget the ending
blessing and a curse
save money by re-reading
lose your sanity trying to remember what that one with the blue spine was all abt anyway

so here i will ruin the last few books i have read

spoilers
obviously

lucky bones by amanda ((i think)) sebold
blah
i don’t know why i re-read this
other than the fact that it is quick painless
and occasionally gives goosebumps during the heaven scenes
ending: harvey dies by icicle

south of the border, west of the sun by haruki muriakami
the shortest of his books i have read so far
i finished it in less that 24 hrs and was genuinely MAD when it was over
not only short but also without his usual clairvoyant characters
ending: he stays with
***break***
wld you believe me if i told you i had to open the book up to figure out how it ended
well
i did
and i’m still confused and i only just finished it 72 hrs ago
***end break***
yukiko after shimamoto leaves him in the cottage after their torrid love making sessions
***break***
now i made it sound like a walgreens 6.99 paperback
well it’s not
it was well over $10
***end break***

stolen lives by malika oukfir
i got this as a christmas present
story– good
writing– que horrible
ending: malika and three siblings break out of prison
contact the press and french lawyers
go on house arrest for four more years in lavish home with any item they desire at their fingertips etc etc
finally get ‘released’
and head to paris

sacrifice by andrew vachss
i thought that by reading vacchs again after a 5 year hiatus
well i thought i wouldn’t dig him the way i did years ago
i’m happy to say that
although i find some of the ‘center yourself’ things corny
i still love the haiku-like prose
the cursing
the cigarettes
the violence
the non sensical speech patterns
the familial aspects
(which is what drew me to his books in the first place)
moving on
ending: burke shoots up a house where baby snatchers live
he kills a kid in the process

the wind up bird chronicle by haruki murakami
700 some odd pages of the best epic story i have read in my twenty something yrs
ending: see? i don’t remember
all i remember is a cat called noburu wotaya
yumiko, the main character’s wife
–i don’t remember his name
may the crazy one who tried to lock him in a well
kreta cano
malta kano
named after the islands
malta wore a red plastic hat
kreta was a call girl who was raped by noburu wotaya
not nobura wotaya the cat but the man the cat was named after
the man is also yumiko’s brother
it’s all coming back to me as i type
but i still don’t remember the ending
fck
this one i finished less than two weeks ago

i think i need to get on that gingko biloba

more ending round ups to come
i’m rereading another vachss

welcome back, blog