Amerika - Force of Occupation

I've been going down to Portland (it's South of where I live now) on weekends lately. I have to strongly consider the possibility of moving there some day in the very near future. I've applied for several jobs there, and will continue to do so. I don't want to go. I love Olympia, but I've been unemployed for over a year now. My unemployment is about to run out (again), and my marriage is in ruins. (She doesn't even call it home anymore. Just refers to it as "the duplex.") The last thing I want to do is run in to her around town. There's only 30,000 of us after all, so the chances are pretty good that I will at some point. Compared to Portland, Olympia is about the size of one small corner of one of the neighborhoods there. That does not include Olympia's neighbors of Lacey and Tumwater. They aren't terribly large either, however, and the three of them combined are probably a quarter the size of Portland. For the curious, it's worth looking at the areas on Google Maps or Google Earth.

Still, I have friends here, favorite spots, favorite restaurants, an awesome old movie house, and three of the best radio stations in the world. That's right, the whole wide world. Sure, Portland may have KBOO, but we have KAOS, Free Radio Olympia and KOWA. KOWA may not be the best in terms of local programming and such, but they are commercial free, and very much a part of our community. I haven't listened to commercial radio in so long that I effectively can't anymore. Try going years at a stretch without television ads, or listening to commercial radio, then being attacked by this onslaught of marketing designed to reach the jaded who have been exposed to it for years. The effort put in to manipulating people to be consumers just blows my mind. (I was in a supermarket the other day, and the in-store sound system mentioned something about what they called a fact. I wish I could remember exactly what it was the recorded voice said, but it wasn't a fact at all! It was an observation at best. Of course this supposed fact was in support of whatever it was they were selling. No wonder people have such a hard time with critical thinking.) And I just like the area. I like the small town feel and the lack of being completely awash and lost in a neverending tide of humanity when I'm riding my bike downtown, or riding to either of our two co-ops. The leaves have been turning for a couple of weeks now. Sometimes it seems like the streets are lined with fire because of all the colors. Sure, Portland has Fall as well, and not to put too fine a point on it, it's Portland. Not Olympia. They have a really big river bisecting the city in to East and West, and we have the Puget Sound. Plus, I can visit Portland from here. No need to move down there when I can just visit.

All of this is of course avoiding the obvious: no matter how many friends I have here, or however many connections I feel like I've made, very few – if any – are going to keep me off the streets during the coming Northwest winter. Nothing at this point is going to save my marriage, so I have to think in terms of what I need to do for me. It's just such a fucked up mess. I can't believe I'm here. I don't just don't know what to do. Half of me says to go rent a truck and bribe some people to help me move (it could be done in three hours tops), and the other half says wait and see. If I'm the only one with any interest is trying then I am clearly wasting my time. She has said that she no longer feels that she needs to worry about saying something that might hurt my feelings. From that alone, the answer is obvious as to what I need to do. We have a counseling appointment of the 5th of next month. I suppose I can wait until then to start packing. I can do it all myself in about a day, but it would be nice to have all my stuff out when she gets home from work one day. She says she wants to be alone? Well, guess what sister? The place and the bills will be all yours.

It may be that I am not around much for a while. I still have a laptop, and I know where all the wireless hotspots are in town, so I shouldn't ever be too far. I have been talking about selling as much as I can though, and taking my bike to Europe for a couple of years. A friend has been wanting me to go to Ecuador with him and some others for three months, as well. I just don't know how well a vegan would fare in those lands. From what I hear, it's doable, but hardly easy if you're traveling. Which reminds me, one point in Portland's favor is that there are at least two restaurants that are totally vegan. Another thing about Portland is that it's consistently in the top 10 best cycling cities in the world. This means that it's consistently the number one city in the US. I happen to love riding, so that's a good thing to know about Portland.

I thought it would be easy to write a requiem for the best car I'd ever had. I saw it for the last time today, and it's really, really gone. I'm still kind of stunned that it's gone. Even more, I'm stunned that I'm stunned over the passing of a car. I'm usually of the attitude when I see someone and their vehicle that they've clearly spent waaay too much money on, "Dude, it's just a car..." Expensive flashy "bling" cars or truncks don't impress me at all.

I feel vindicated for my emotion now though, when I think that I got this car at a garage sale for US$750. then after driving it straight to the car dealership and putting US$5,000. in to it to get it running correctly and be road-worthy, I still had "just a car." That was the best part for me. I had a proletariat-mobile--it was a Saturn SL1, for christ' sake--that ran really well, considering I was the third owner, and the two previous to me had essentially beaten that car to shit. It's really gone. I suspect I'll be the last owner.

(The title to this post is actually a nod to the girlfriend I was with when I got this car. She deserves more than a nod, but that's all I can offer her, presently. She helped me pay for the US$5,000. in repairs by charging the bill on her credit card, then allowing me to pay off the credit car bill over time--which I did. Her name is Sarah.)

(Caveat: This post was written while still not entirely awake. It may come across as a rambling diatribe, but the sentiment is still true.)

I'm not as cavalier as I used to be with respect to trying new releases of Linux distros, or cobbling together seemingly discordant pieces of hardware to build a functional machine as I once was. That fact alone has I'm sure led to some manner of atrophy in my "Wow, that's cool" bone.

KDE 4 is going to drive me to Gnome. I don't like Gnome at all, but KDE 4 is just awful. It seems like the developers put too much energy in to trying to make KDE 4 pretty (read: eye candy), but they've also managed to make things difficult to accomplish via the GUI. With all due respect to those who like KDE 4, it seems like things have been dumbed down to a point where most of the configurability that used to be straightforward is now difficult at best. For example, I will grant you that KNetworkManager has never been stellar. However, it has become a series of prompts followed by a "Next" button. I've always felt Gnome made things more difficult for me in its effort to be easy and friendly. Maybe KDE 4 is just such a departure from what I'm used to...no, it sucks. Not that I'm using this name drop for any kind of cred, but anyone remember when Linus Torvalds stated that he encourages “people to just switch to KDE?” Even he has gone to using Gnome.


I for one, don't really care for spiffy graphical effects. What I've seen of MS Vista left me wanting to hurl. That's one reason I've never bothered with the likes of Beryl or Compiz. Pretty is counterproductive! The Proletariat don't need "Pretty" to be great! If I want pretty, I'll download an image of some attractive brunette lady from the Internet and set it as my wallpaper. (I would like to point out that I'm one of those unimaginative dolts who set their screensaver to "blank screen.")

Bah! This whole experience makes me glad that the KDE version of Ubuntu 8.04 is a LTS release.

Mornings are an evil thing. Especially mornings in which I got little--as in maybe 3½ hours--sleep, and my allergies start to kick in. Oh god... I've finally made it to Eugene, Oregon again after six months to see my 86 year old mom. She and her 87 year old boy friend live in "sin," which I think is awesome. One look at her boyfriend makes it readily apperent that her honor is not at stake, even though he's tried to make it so. I think it' cute (if not a little gross), personally. (This is supposed to be some manner of vacation, but what is it about getting away from the jive of the daily grind that compels us to thrash the hell out of ourselves?)

I am so not awake, but the vegan omlette is on the way, and the soy mocha in front of me is super good, even if it's also super-hot. My server this morning at the restaurant is new... The other problems with mornings, particularly Sunday mornings, is that the most snobbish and odius people are at the cool local hole-in-the-wall places I'm attracted to. All the people I relate to are still asleep like decent people. I'm no hippie by any stretch of the imagination, but there's no excuse for treating your server like shit first thing in their morning just because you're an arrogant prick. It just makes me wanna get in their face and say, "Calm down jackass." Sheesh!

This place is called Morning Glory Cafe. It's only been here for a couple of years. It's right across the parking lot from the train station in downtown Eugene. I'd have provided a link, but their website is still under construction and there isn't much to look at.

I need to get a new camera. I'll see what I can do about getting pictures of my mom, her man, and the restaurant.

Okay, I'm paying the bill and out the door. I'm sure the Old Bat and her man are awake and wondering if I'll sleep all day. Boy will they be shocked. I slept until 1:00pm yesterday.

Tonight was the last night of my EMT class. I finished second highest in the class behind someone who works with a fire department, so not too many complaints there. I don't mind being second. The thing that's devastating, though, is that I missed getting a 4.0 by one single point. One point. My final grade was 3.9. I achieved 949 points out of a possible 1,000. Some would be ecstatic with that grade. Especially those who did not pass the final exam. They did not qualify to take the State-level exam. My emotions are in such turmoil that I don't know if I want to cry, or what. So close, ya know? I'm really sad.

I know why I did so poorly. I have this habit of defeating myself. I've always been self-destructive. I reach high, and hold myself to high standards, but then I start to unravel when I get close to achieving whatever goal I'm chasing. I hate that about myself. If you've been reading this blog, you know that my teacher told me a while back that I was probably the top student. I expressed chagrin when he did. It activated my self-defeating mechanisms and I stopped studying as well as I should have. Why, I don't know. I'm not even sure why I do it in the first place. It doesn't help that I'm really hard on my self. I'm sure there's some correlation between creating failure to meet my own expectations, and then emotionally beating myself. I'm trying to postulate on that, but I can't figure out how to articulate the connections I see. It's some form of self-abuse.

Tomorrow is the State-level test, and I feel like I've lost interest in the whole endeavor. We've been told that test is substantially easier than our final. I don't feel any motivation to study. I know I need to, though. I'm not a quitter when I get something in my mind that I want to achieve. I'm going to talk to my best friend tomorrow, also. She knows me well enough that she can give the clarity I need about this situation.

I'm just disappointed in myself, and want to give up and forget it ever happened. I can't, though. I have way too much time and money invested in this goal. I've spent well over US$1,200. and am supposed to find a job as an EMT now. It's going to be hard. Most people have agencies they are working with, but since I did this by myself I'm alone. I can do volunteering with local fire departments to get the experience I need to work for a private company. Or I can go work in an emergency room. Working in a hospital sounds fun, but I wouldn't be using all my training. I would definitely acquire other skills that are required by the hospital. Still, I haven't worked in an ambulance yet, so I have little concept of that dimension of being an EMT.

The biggest problem I have is that my unemployment insurance is running out in a couple of weeks, and that's going to cause a lot of strife for me at home. We're already on the verge of divorcing as it is (long story), and I'm not going to be able to handle the emotional difficulties that living on one income with someone that is extremely insecure regarding money are going to bring out. Just the emotions caused by my unemployment are a terrible strain.

I know tomorrow is a new day, and all that, but it's hard to find comfort in that.