You can always count on the grey lady to go to bat for the little guy.  No, wait, that’s not what I meant to say.  What’s it called when you always side with the propertied elite?  Oh right, let me correct myself: you can always count on the grey lady to swing a bat at the little guy.

Today’s internet cover page featured a stirring piece on the plight of the downtrodden landlord.  That’s right, the weak, disempowered few who own more property than they need, and grow richer every month as a result of their already being wealthier than everyone else.  Woe is them!

Note how the NYTimes characterizes the tenants as a noisy, despicable horde, whose disruptive behavior needlessly antagonizes the innocent owners, drowning them out, and hurting their poor, sensitive, bourgeoisie ears.  I bet the tenants were smelly and diseased, too.

Unfortunately the NYTimes fails to generalize as broadly about landlords, so let me offer a primer of the various genus of owner, so that we may know of whom we speak.

The landed gentry consists of four basic varietals.  First, there is the little-old-lady-landlord, or LOLL.  This is a breed known for its innocuous properties, and also rumored to have homeopathic qualities (chicken soup commonly arrives at opportune moments).  The LOLL deserves the utmost respect and deference for her surrogate parenting of recent college grads across America.

Second, and similarly non-threatening, is the rich developer turned-landlord.  In these times of economic turmoil, your typical rich developer who rents stylishly appointed condominiums to yuppies must be excused for debasing his trade by renting instead of selling; in a down market one must wait until an appropriately profitable time to unload his decadent wares.

Third, and far more despicable, is the disembodied property management company.  These inorganic, soulless combines perform the useful role of divorcing the role of landlord from the emotions and empathy of the human experience.  You’ll never find a company knocking on your door with chicken soup, but you also don’t have to worry about the company shutting off your water because they think your pregnant girlfriend is a slut for bearing offspring out of wedlock.

Last, but not least inhuman, is the slumlord.  These profiteers pry out what little cash makes its way into the calloused, arthritic, carpal tunnely hands of the working poor.  By cramming the largest number of renters into their buildings, slumlords operate a business requiring* virtually no upkeep, and limited in its profitability only by the rent ceilings imposed by good-hearted law-makers and ballot initiatives.

*state law typically requires that lessors of real property maintain the property in conditions fit for safe human habitation.  rofl.

Finally, let us consider the testimonials selected by the accomplished and underappreciated Journalists at the Times.  Mr. Petrov, a 32 year-old who owns a 55-unit building in New York, decries the a great sacrifices that he must make for his awful, blood-sucking tenants.  It must be hard to own such an enormous building on such an extremely valuable plot of land.  I can’t imagine what trials and tribulations befell him on his way to inheriting a piece of property probably worth millions of dollars.  Of course, Mr. Petrov could always unload his terrible burden on the Free Market that he so prizes… that is, if he’s been keeping the rooms in decent condition.

Maintaining rental properties in saleable condition?  What about market incentives?!  Keeping things nice when they’re only being offered for rent… that would be Socialism!

“I have to say there was a mile or two,”

A few minutes ago I was alone in my fancy new apartment working on an opposition brief to [multinational bank]’s demurrer to my lawsuit against them, bathing in the singular intensity that comes with staring at glowing screen after midnight while flitting fingers furiously pour out the argument that fucking hits it out of the park.

“I had the itch to fly and I flew”

Then Paul Simon’s Father and Daughter came on and I froze and realized that with all of my heart I’d rather be in be back in Tacoma sitting next to Dad while he watches Moo shine.

“the only line that is true is the line   you’re               from.”

Everything is much easier when you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

was/I/knew/I/was/I/was

coming soon to a neighborhood near you

Looking for a signs of the apocalypse?  Look no further than the recent spike in ax-murders.  After the New York Times was kind enough to devote front page space (below the fold) on the brutal ax-murder of a 13 year-old settler, I wondered why an israeli teenager killed by an ax while being forced by his parents to assist in the occupation of palestine gets better coverage in the venerable Times than four murdered Oakland cops (buried on page A9)?  The answer is simple, but terrifying.

This is only the most recent in a terrifying trend of ax attacks.  At first, the fact that the New York Times only cares about this one (curious…) led me to believe that it was an isolated incident, front page material only for its freakishness.  If only that were the case.

Two weeks ago, a soon-to-be divorced Pierce County couple’s legal battles came to a premature resolution when the husband hacked apart his wife and daughter.  Around the same time, Chicago residents were shocked to learn that a man who had been arrested after wielding an ax in what police described as the “March 19 melee” lacks the basic human decency to be honest about his crimes.  In January, a Native American man killed another Native American man by chopping his head with an ax, on some reservation somewhere than none of the major news outlets care about.  Even Utah has its share of ax-murderers: earlier this week a Utah man was sentenced to three years in prison for attempted murder with a battle ax.

Is there something in the water?  These cases are not geographically isolated, so probably not.  Given the fact that none of the victims were zombies or mutants, (yet) and the fact that at least one of these attacks was committed using a lame medieval battle ax (instead of a cool, futuristic ax-gun), I think its unfair to lay the blame squarely at the feet of violent video games.  Lets be realists, its time to face facts: this is incontrovertible evidence of the coming apocalypse.  And the only way to fight axes, is with axes that have swords hidden inside them.

this lord of the rings geek's jeans and t-shirt are made of invincible spider silk

At the end of the day, there’s one other lesson to learn.  The New York Times doesn’t give a shit about your ax-murdered relatives, unless they were murdered while living on someone else’s land.  I’m sure they would have covered the Native American victim, if he had wandered off the reservation before being dismembered.

this is our responsibility

Tent City, Sacramento, CA.  March 10, 2009

And you’re gonna bitch about “redistribution of wealth”?   Looks to me like its not distributed very well anyhow these days.

she looks good in a hood

You probably didn’t know this, but the main reason that anyone ever shows up to those anarchist rallies is girls.  That’s right, folks, just like everything man has ever accomplished, anarchism is yet another way to impress the ladies.  However, this is no ordinary I’m-just-doing-this-to-get-laid type of situation.  A dedicated anarchist, like a 24 year old Mormon virgin, has reduced himself to solely one characteristic.  Intense, passionate dedication to the cause.  An anarchist with a cool car is a sell-out.  Anarchists must eschew attractive, brand-name clothing.  You can’t take an anarchist on a date to a nice restaurant, because true anarchists are freegans who don’t have any money for romantic dinners anyway.  And an anarchist without a stupid-looking haircut is hardly an anarchist at all.

So, you see, the male anarchist lives between the rock of devotion and the hard-place of the real world.  Only by flaunting his violent, puerile frustration with The System that keeps him Down, can he attract enough attention to find a mate.  Or even just a special lady friend.

These aren’t just any ladies, mind you.  As it turns out, anarchist chicks are also post-modern ultra-feminists who believe that just as it is our duty to enjoy one another’s bodies, it is also our duty not to procreate in such a fragile, collapsing ecosystem.  Besides, nuclear families are a prison built by The Man.  So imagine the fount of frustration stored within each male anarchist, faced both with a total incapacity to utilize traditional social tactics of attractiveness, and simultaneously surrounded by some of the swinginest, abortion-loving, disaffected hotties imaginable.

It’s not easy living on the cutting edge of counter-culture.  We can only wish them safe travels, and hope our armored cops don’t destroy their eye sockets or genitals with their rubber bullets.  I’m sure that’s what the New York Times had in mind when they ran that photo on the cover.

Here’s the latest installment of The New York Times’ fascinating series “why the richest people in America are also the most important!”  This piece reveals the utterly selfless devotion to mankind demonstrated by a particular AIG financial products VP, who is totally selflessly quitting AIG because the American people selfishly stole back his “earnings.”  In the letter, which is carefully written to appear as if it were not intended for publication, our poor millionaire not only assures us that he is a really, REALLY good guy, who, like, totally cares about other people and stuff, but that he had nothing (seriously, you can ask ALL his friends) to do with the implosion of the American economy.  So America, it’s way fucked up to stereotype him like that.

All Your Bonus Are Belong To Us

Important note: our hero feels betrayed that he doesn’t to keep some of the bailout money intendeded to rescue our flailing economy.  So he’s going to take his ball and go home.  I’m sure there’s no one else capable of doing his job, especially no one else as entirely motivated by bonus “earnings”, so it will probably sit vacant for a while.  What a shame that it impossible to find good financial products VPs these days, since no banks or investment firms have gone under in the last year and a half.  If only unemployment were at record highs…

This morning I woke up on a pull-out couch.  Lost and Found.  Get dressed, grab my bag and bike, and head out the door of a new apartment building.  Guys in suits with newspapers.  Buy breakfast at Noah’s authentically fake-thentic new york bagel repository.  Bitter, overhot coffee.

Disembodied BART announcement: people who eat inside the station are unruly, misbehaving tramps, deserving of fines for their rude and brutish disposition.  I graze covertly, surprised that the bageleggancheese has so much flavor.  Fennel, pepper, salt, poppyseeds and garlic turn microwaved eggs palatable.

Dublin-Pleasanton Train, 8 Cars Board Center.  Room for the bike, sitting next to an empty seat that begs me to set my prematurely stale coffee down onits flat-not-quite-stable surface.  I am no fool! The liquid, clutched by my left hand, pours rapid-fire into my mouth, in cautious, wincing spurts as the train roars sourly through the Transbay Tube.

West Oakland / Lake Merritt / Fruitvalegrabmybag, down the stairs, fare gate, stradle the bike, play tag with International Blvds potholes, lock up the bike.  Centro Legal de la Raza opens wide, and as I wave to Esmerelda, Patty says there’s no one else working today.

“¿Francisca Rodriguez?  Mucho gusto, soy un estudiante–trabajo bajo la supervision de abogados.  Por favor, sientese y describame el problema.”

Shit is constantly happening to us. There’s all this noise out there, bouncing off walls and bashing your eardrums, from carhorns to expletives to the subsonic hum of radio waves on their way into outer space. Sometimes it hails on you while you’re standing alone by the side of the street.

Sometimes the shit has an author. They are purposefully designing it for you, customizing it for maximum effect. Somebody tells you that your ass looks fat, that your new haircut is interesting, that you look really tired. They ask what you’re doing here. Why the hell you don’t just mind your own fucking business. Or maybe they just laugh at you. Don’t you just wanna punch the asshole right in his asshole mouth?!

Control yourself. Take only what you need from it. It sucks to be the guy with the super-sweet facial tick who feels compelled to shout at you from across the room. The only thing worse than getting that angry, is a beatific smile spreading across the face of the guy you’re screaming at. We like to watch you laughing. But he doesn’t.

She’s late.  “Go.”  Out into the drizzle, in a hurried half-jog, important papers shielding important hairdo from the damp that California’s empty reservoirs so dearly need.  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” The car starts on the first try (“YES!”) and Renee Montagne’s authoritative voice introduces a piece about Mattel’s strategy for selling Barbies in Shanghai.  “Christ.”  The radio story’s focus on the absurdly proportioned doll sends her left hand to her waistline, where she absent-mindedly adjusts the tuck of her silk shirt and pinches the bulge just above the waist of her pants.  “gym tonight.”  Her right hand deftly steers the wheel and the car pulls a bit abruptly out of a driveway to the left, barely missing a spandex-clad cyclist who raps his right hand against her rear window as he passes silenty. “shit. shit, shit, SHIT.”  She’ll be about 13 minutes late for work today.

This morning is business as usual for the cyclist, who is bundled up to keep out the misting rain.  His front wheel emits a visible spray of water from the shiny asphalt as he glides past a long line of cars.  He is about 20 miles into a 50 mile morning, and has drained the first of his two water bottles.  Up ahead the road narrows.  A minivan will hover on his rear wheel there, angering the BMW driver behind.  Eventually, into a blind turn, the bimmer will test its mettle, squealing the high performance tires against the slick street, and pass the cyclist close enough for him to hear the string of epithets that its driver has concocted from within his steel-encased haven of hypertension.

The bimmer is 19 minutes late for its destination.  The cyclist will be on the road for another hour after that, but the road will be different then, devoid of BMWs.  As the post commute quiet sets in, the cyclist’s shoulders come unhunched, his pedal-stroke smooths, and his gleaming silver bicycle sails up and down the unincorporated county hillside.  He has only one thought about the drivers he encountered that morning.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t join me.”

A better writer than I told me to stop thinking so much and write everyday and just see what happens. She was right, so I’m going to veer from self-conscious profundity to frivolity subtly laden with oblique, yet equally revealing clues about the life of a guy, his bike, the law, our culture, and imported french fruit preserves.

it is le tasty

Fruits should be mashed, not juiced. Pitting them is fine, but exacting the essence of their excellence requires pulp. The only way to eat fruit in processed form is jam. Jelly be damned, you are but the ugly stepchild of juice and gelatin. There, I said it. Juice-lovers of the world, take arms against me for I am your nemesis.

Call me a dandy if you will, but my foppishness collides with a penchant for black coffee, burnt cheese, bitterly hopped beer, and levi’s.  So, there.  U-S-A!