No More Shakespearos

So much knowledge today, so much wisdom to lay out there. I don't like to normally go to the store where the other Arabs work when I want to buy a lot of beer. The Pakistani dude and of course the Americans, they don't care - not too much anyhow, but the Arabs, they look at me like, "Aw maaan, we thought you were cool, we thought you would be alright." They say - You're an Arab right? And I say - Shwaya - a little. But motherfucker I got born in Cleveland and have a white mom so I like beer. I ain't even care what the prophet says. So anyhow I did go to the twitchy, sad Arab dude's store instead of my Pakistani neighbor's store or to Marcs or to anywhere else because of how the sidewalk is. Today it is slush and bullshit, it is slippery like the dickens and wet and you can tell that if you fell down in it, you'd be pretty fucking pissed off, you'd be mad as a hornets nest distrbed abutting a wasps nest disturbed by noisy bee neighbor. It's just barely warm enough today to turn it all to dirty slush and this after a very cold week, and up against what looks to be the dooming cold come to visit from the North Pole in a day or two.

I needed to get a lot of beer in case of not doing shit at all tomorrow but drinking beers and painting pictures, maybe, drinking beers for sure, but whatever - usefulness. Whatever being cool and interesting. I got to go to work when the temperature goes below the zero, I don't know if I have to go, but I'm going to. I thought for a minute, I said to myself what the great helmsman said - "Learn to emulate your labor heroes." So I'll go be a red martyr and lose a toe waiting on the bus. I ain't want to die trying to get to work, but I could go for losing a toe, that's a story there. Except, probably if I were a proper Maoist labor hero I'd be shoveling snow out of sidewalks all day today so that the PLA could walk on down the road just fine, and probably I'd be some old lady. I don't know what I've got to say about anything except, if it really is going to be the coldest day ever I may as well add that badge to my sash - I went to work on the coldest day ever. That's the thing to do. You know, supposing the bus comes and I don't die waiting.

I'm sour about the RTA today because I was meant to go on a tour of a distillery and have free whiskey - but because the infrastructure is 100 years old and can't maintain through local conditions the buses didn't run right and no one said nothing about nothing. I learned it, while waiting on the corner when the long lines of angryfaces were walking on down the slush-walk single file "That 40 ain't go this way now, the whole down the hill got flooded." So I missed my chances for free whiskey because of transit and urban decay.


Meantime this kid came to stay with me last night, and we had a little time - watched the batman cartoon that I got for her, turns out it's pretty neat. I told her the story of how I got through 7th grade math. Algebra. Not by knowing algebra you understand, but the teacher was this young dude fresh from college, says he: "I love batman (the 60's show was in syndication then) so he added to the exams this extra credit where if you could name a batman villain you'd get extra credit for every one." So I fucked up at math but my batman lore went DEEP - I got Marcia queen of diamonds and False Face, and Vincent Price as the Egghead. For real I was actor and number of appearances on that exam. Not that I ever did solve for X but I still passed algebra. So I told her this story and it was funny, and we talked about things and wasted time and stayed in and were chill and we get to talking about Christmas and what she got and she says: "what present did you like the best." I had to point out that I didn't get a christmas present* (which is true! Even on the gift exchange my name didn't get put in! Crazy, or is it...?) Well I was laughing about it because I'm grown and Christmas is for children - but this made her cry, I didn't catch it right away, it seemed like she was laughing, but she was crying, poor kid. "Don't you dare cry about it little kid, little kid, who cares!" Put her to bed and went to sleep right after.

Today we watched cartoons before she went down Akron way to see her Mother's mother, and up till then we were playing around and looking up nonsense on youtube - somewhere they're talking about who's your hero and role-model and she's like - answering back "My Dad." But like - in a way where it was self unselfconscious and without looking to see if I would notice. Like, legitimately, without a pandering childish desire for approval she's calling me out as her hero. Fuck kid, you're breaking my heart constantly. I got 8 years to figure out how to put you through college, you're not making any of this easy kid.

So anyhow I'm somebody's hero. Crazy thing to think about - this is what people are afraid of when they say they don't want kids.

Shit, I don't have a role model. I have no heroes, I never did, I came up punk-rock as fuck and knew that that was gibberish fooltalk for nitwits.

I'll lose a toe to go to work on some historically cold day but I won't shovel snow because I don't fucking have to.

* For christmas I seem to have gotten a lot of microbes actually - right now I'm just shaking what seems to be the last of a series of colds and flus that shot through my dumb old body for two straight weeks. I bet I'd be cured now, right now, if I'd gotten an amount of free whiskey. Instead no. The Wasteland.