and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Is it any wonder that, given the general distaste - disgust - I have for the normal person on the street, I spend an inordinate amount of time interacting with a computer - a whirring spinning electron-firing glob of machine-ness - that doesn't talk back even in the worst of times? No, it's not really surprising at all so I don't expect it to be any real epiphany to verbalize it. Just talking out loud.

It's dark and I'm walking home along the working street called Fore and things are hustling, bustling, people are in and out of the bars spending money like it's their job - like, gosh, this american economy is really crankin, eh? like there is so much to live for, yah? like, let's go have a beer with all this extra money lying around. It's as if the service industry were enough to support the whole damn town, the whole damn state, the whole fucking damn world for that matter - all on minimum wage and tips - tips which, coming from the cheap/rich elderly up from the retirement communities of the "big city" and from the canadiens down from the north who don't know any better, well it ain't that great just to let you know.

Don't get me wrong.. no, never get me wrong.. Someone's gotta work the service - service the work as it were - otherwise who'd make the burritos? Who'd serve the beer? But someone - and this is what I'm really getting at here - someone's gotta buy those beers. Someone's gotta get drunk.

I'm sayin' it ain't too easy to get drunk when you're paying 60% of your pay towards rent and the other 40% to bills, loans, payments, charges.. It's goddamn impossible, is what it is.

Today, here, in this town, the newspaper printed an article: $625 for a two bedroom - in which the author - a journalist, of course - searches for an affordable apartment in this city for him, his two young children, and his stay-at-home wife. The atrocity here is that he a) expected to find something "perfect", b) thought it reasonable to be raising two kids and supporting an unemployeed wife on a journalists salary in the downtown district, and c) thought inside the box. That last one is the important part - thinking inside the box. Anytime you do that you stuck... inside... the box and you're f u c k e d by G dubya and his merry men cause they WANT you to think inside the box. They WANT you to pay your taxes and work work work like a motherfucker - yes, 100 hours if necessary - because every last hour you work is one last hour that they have to work.

Excuse me Mr. Journalist. Do you think that perhaps people joke about english majors for a reason? Do you suppose apartments, unlike money, grow on trees, drop to the ground, root in, and advertise themselves for reasonable rent all because you need one? No, I did not think so. Don't colour it purple when it's really blue, please.

What would be reasonable is purchasing a second car - a beater, maybe. At 30-something you could find a $500 shitbox and pay *maybe* $150 a month of liability on it, and heck, while you're at it, run biodiesel at 50~75 cents a gallon. So now it's $1200 a year for a car (let's presume you have to buy a new beater every year, yah?). But that $1200 would get you far enough out of the city to find you your $625 two bedroom apartment.. and yah, it might even be perfect.

What would be reasonable is expecting some hardships in life - expect things don't come for free. If my neighbour can live alone, with her 3 year old kid, while working crap jobs, and going to college.. and graduate.. then certainly you, too, could bend a little bit? Do you think perhaps mom could get a part time job? Do you think perhaps you could LOOK a little bit for reasonable housing?

I'm far above the poverty line. I wouldn't qualify for section-8 housing if I wanted to. Yet when I looked for places they practically looked for me. Section-8 housing was to be had everywhere. I found landlords willing to stretch the truth, landlords willing to look the other way..

Portland isn't the worst place to be looking for an apartment.

I suppose you'll tell me that you shouldn't have to do these things. Living in the United States of America is your birthright. Cheap housing is your birthright. Federal subsidies are your birthright. We should approve more, right? We should spend all our money, in fact, supporting single-income english-major families?

There is a reason we don't live under communism. It's because it doesn't work. It's because the guy carrying the stones around all day can't come to terms with the fact that the dude sitting in an office typing newsprint gets paid the same. It's because the guy who tries real hard, puts in the effort, he can't stand it that the lazy bum gets the same. It's because jealousy is a human reality. It's why we're capital. Capital, tip top, happy as clams to live free or die - to kill or be killed - to survive as the fittest... that is until we aren't free, are killed, or aren't the fittest.

Then we want federal subsidies.

Lost my jacket. Lost it, left it at the bar. Nice, too.. leather with my favourite pipe and some half & half tobaccy in it. Expensive - expensive to me, anyway. Survival of the fittest? I certainly wasn't too fit to forget the jacket, now was I? Bummer.. but I'll deal.. but first I gotta go pay my rent. It's reasonable, but I put up with crazy roommates and poor maintenance. It's reasonable but I share things and I don't have the biggest rooms. The floors could be re-buffed.

I guess I'm saying it ain't perfect.

but it's perfect to me.