The Dumpster Deva smiled again!

The Dumpster Deva, like other Spirits I have known and loved, sometimes uses mortals to further her work.  Just yesterday, I found a box of food someone had set outside the door to the Wasilla Post Office, with a little hand-lettered sign–”Free food please take.”  So I took, got some canned goods and stuff my family and I could use, and later bagged up the rest along with some other food I had hanging around my cabin.  Next, went to Blockbuster to redeem a coupon I got at the library for a free video, found a quarter on the ground outside.  Sweet.

Later that day at my flea market stand, I visited a neighbor to check on a pending business deal.  Then he came over to me with an armload of videos, said “Here, I want to get rid of these.”  (The bunch came to 10 VHS and 4 DVDs, one of which was new in the box.  Most were watchable but sans slip covers, but the Star Wars was damaged, and there was a Felix the Cat cartoon in a slip cover for an old George Clooney action flick.  Right now, I am in process of watching Edward Scissorhands.  But I digress.)  I gave him the bag of food along with a commitment to give him a boom box I had gotten out of the dumpster last week.

Business at the stand was real slow–bottom line: $22, gross.  (That’s gross as opposed to net, not gross as in yuck.)  It was gratifying, though, since my first customer had been a be-back who actually came back.  That happens rarely.  My other customer bought a real white elephant, a stupid little book written by Dusty Sourdough,  the stage name of an insipid  local entertainer, which I marked way up because he had autographed it.  I had  expected two of my regular knife customers to show up–one came–drove ten miles on a four-wheeler to get there–and told me that he hadn’t been paid that day and his buddy had to work late, but promised to be back this afternoon, asked me to set aside a new fantasy knife and a battle ax for him.

So I pack up and go back to my little cabin.   Before going in to greet my cat, I took a little bag of trash from my stand to the dumpster–wahoo!  It was piled high with boxes and interesting bags of stuff, and there were three kiddy car seats on the ground, and a golf bag sticking up out of one side of the dumpster.  I was in heaven!  Spent hours dragging stuff into and around my cabin, and when the dust cleared, so to speak, I had a lot of stuff.

Like a whole box of videos, a few commercial, but mostly bootleg movies taped off TV.  A smaller box full of computer circuit boards and cooling fans and hard drives for Doug (Kathy’s son) to recycle into his artworks.  A bunch of small personal items I’ll use–Q-tips and body wash and shampoo and roll-on antiperspirant. A box of dog Christmas cards–they show a room-full of dogs.  One says “Did anyone water the tree?” and everyone else says “I did!”  A letter dated 1985 and written in French.  A road map of Scotland, and one of Frankfurt, Germany, and Bologna, Italy. A diary, one entry of which starts “Judy showed up, drunk again as usual.” A small radio/tape recorder which works.  A  digital phone answering machine.  An Eddie Bauer headband that says “Go Dee Dee.”  (Dee Dee Jonrowe is one of the more popular Iditarod mushers.)  A nice pair of gloves I’ll wear when the weather gets colder.  Sixteen cents in cash American.  (Last week, I got a Mexican 100-peso coin worth $2.50 American.) And maybe best of all, six boxes of single-dose vials of Albuterol, a spendy asthma med Kathy uses.  A tad outdated, but maybe still useful.

This morning, I put back the rejects, the boxes and bags full of trash that was really, well, trashy.  Wet clothes and broken toys and such.  The dumpster had been emptied, so the cycle begins anew.

God, we’re rich!  (Part II)

Okay, this time I mean we as in me and my pack–er, family.  Okay, pack–three domesticated primates, one canid, two felids, one to come (I hope).  We are not rich in money, I think I made that abundantly clear.  But we ARE rich in other, arguably more important, things.

Like, well, things.  Our income is maybe one-third the average for Alaska, but boy do we have a lot of things.  Some were gifts, some were courtesy of the dumpster deva, some were stolen, some we actually bought and paid for.  Like my Leicas, the Rolls-Royces of cameras.  I have two, a black M-4 MOT and a red dot, double stroke European model M-3.  Either one is worth more than my car, together they are worth more than our trailer and land.

And artworks.  We have this wonderful ugly bronze vase, had a $2000+ price tag on it fifteen years ago.  And another bronze, of a running wild feline of some sort.  And Kathys collection of story-teller figures, and our Alaskan prints and lithos and photographs, mostly of wildlife.

And weapons.  Sure, I’m an arms dealer, so guns and knives DO tend to come and go.  But I am sure that Kathy will be keeping her .357 magnum snubby and I’ll be keeping my .44 magnum Ruger Super Blackhawk and my derringers and a few other goodies I don’t want to mention.  And Kathy and Doug’s joint knife/sword collection is getting impressive.

Then there’s the rocks.  The rocks kept us together during a few rough spots–I refused to leave, didn’t want to deal with the custody battle for the choicest ones–like a big elestial quartz crystal and an even bigger dogtooth calcite crystal and rutilated quartz to die for.  My latest acquisition–a big black tourmaline crystal that has quartz crystals growing out of it, and an aquamarine crystal growing out of the quartz.  Any rock and mineral museum on the planet would love to have it–and it’s mine, all mine bwaa ha ha ha ha.

 Then there are the really important things.Like freedom.   Kathy and I are somewhat constrained by our physical health and finances, but other than that, we pretty much do what we want to.  Like when Kathy (aka SuSu) took off for a weekend NA camping trip.  I run my own business, so I set my own hours, usually work longer and harder than when I was a wage slave.  But it is my choice.  Right now, I’m blogging, soon I’ll be shopping, then I’ll open my stand.  I am pretty much always open, weather permitting, and enjoyed my two days off due to the recent rain storms.

We also have a lot more freedom since we are no longer in thrall to various drugs.  Now we make our own decisions, instead of having the dope make the decision–dope usually decides to do more dope.  That is no way to have a life.

Finally, I enjoy my freedom to carry a concealed weapon without needing a permit.  Of course, I could have carried concealed before, but in my old age I am getting much more careful about the laws I break.

Then there are the spiritual riches.  Kathy is one of the most highly evolved people on the planet, and it has been my pleasure and privilege to sort of ride on her coat tails, learn a tremendous amount of stuff from her.  Okay, it hasn’t always been fun–living with a saint/Zen master/anarchist/brutally honest former Hell’s Angels ol’ lady isn’t always fun, but it is always interesting.  Through her influence and my own shamanic work and studies, I feel lucky and privileged to have come to a higher degree of spiritual evolution than I once had thought possible. I have been taught, and accept as true, that gratitude is one of the higher spiritual values.  Boy, am I grateful–to god, to my extended family (which includes critters and dope fiends in NA), to the very universe itself.  Heck, there are even rocks I am grateful to.

Last, and most important–we have love.  Lots of love.  Kathy is  one of the most loving individuals on the planet, and I have learned a lot on that score from her.  Love is arguably the most spiritual of all attributes, and I have been taught–and come to accept as true–that when one can manifest unconditional love and transcend fear, one has attained spiritual perfection.  That is my ultimate goal–nothing less will do.

God, we’re rich–UPDATE!

I am working on a part II, about our (me and my pack) spiritual riches, but I had to throw this in quickly.

This kinda falls under the heading of “take me now,Lord, I have seen everything.”

Last night when I went to the dumpster, there was a MOTORCYCLE in it.  Not next to it, someone actually heaved a bloody motorcycle into the bloody dumpster!  I doubt it runs, but any competant  Cuban mechanic could probably have it back on the road in a week or so.

God, we’re rich!

I don’t mean me or my family.  We’re poor.  I’m sitting here wearing a shirt I got out of a dumpster.  The rest of my clothes (including socks and undies) came from a thrift shop, and Kathy bought my shoes at a yard sale.  Our bifocals came courtesy of the Willow Lions Club, and we are all–including the cats– doing without dental care we can’t afford.  Health insurance is out of the question, as is a real vacation. No, by “we” I mean the Untied States of Amerika (sic).  As a nation, we are not only rich, but also fat and stupid.  I think this is one reason why other countries hate us.  I can’t blame all the hate on the arrogant, all-hat no-cattle, wannabee cowboy in the White House.

This came home to me recently at my booth at the Wasilla Farmer’s Market.  This well-dressed white woman came by, said “My, this all looks so good, I wish I could have all of it.”  I gave her my little sales pitch–everything on my main table (jewelry–including hand-made earrings made by Kathy’s hands, collectible pins from the Iditarod and Fur Rondy and stuff, hats with one-of-a-kind Native beadwork, ansd a whole bunch of knives) sells for $10 each, any three for $20.

Lady Bountiful starts to poormouth, talking about how much money she has spent already in the first two months of her three-month vacation.  WTF!?!  I can’t afford to take a day off to go to the state fair, and this rich bitch is on a three-month Alaska vacation?  She had no idea how insulting, how  patronizing she was being.  She had no idea how much I wanted to eviscerate her (okay, I’m exaggerating–maim a little, perhaps)–or at least have a few words with her, but she pranced off before I could begin to educate her regarding a few realities of life.

But I digress.  Actually, this “we’re rich” idea has been percolating in my tiny mind for months, prompted by the endless supplly of goodies that streams from the local dumpster.  As I have mentioned before, I live at Felony Flats, a rag-tag collection of cabins and storage units (people live in some of the storage units, too) where I have a flea market stand.  I am one of the few folks there who actually works for a living, and the only dealer there who actually has a business license.  The bottom line is, we are all pretty much there because we have no place else to go.

Still, we throw enough away to keep a third-world junk dealer in clover. Clothing in riotous abundance–last night, Kathy tried on a brand-new sweater (labels still attached) that I had scrounged–looked good on her, too.  This morning, I dropped off six bags of clothing at a Big Brothers/Big Sisters collection point–most of it came from the dumpster.  A month or so ago, I gave one of my wife’s pregnant friends a shitload of baby stuff–hats, jumpers, precious little shirts and bib overalls and stuff. One pair of jeans had a $5 bill wadded up in the watch pocket.  Sometimes I get stuff, wear it until it gets dirty, and return it to the dumpster.

Last night, there were three computer monitors in the trash, and I have gotten two boomboxes–one I use, the other (a really nice-looking JVC with CD drive) Doug dismantled to recycle the parts in an art project. An NEC CD/DVD player–the DVD had puked, but the CD player worked just fine. I had to pass on a 19-inch Panasonic color TV, didn’t want to risk hurting myself getting it out. I got a SCOTS CD that I love to play–great fusion zydeco/rockabilly/blues stuff.   Right now, I have 34 pairs of really cool-looking earrings that I scrounged from a business that went under, waiting for me to clean them up and card them and price them–I expect to get $10-20 a pair.

And the list goes on–plumbing supplies, hardware of all  sorts, car parts still in the original packaging, furniture. Oh, and stuffed animals–a big bear that sits on my bed, an orangatan that went home with Kathy.  And odds and ends galore–scented candles, suitcases, a tube of silicone sealer, tableware, cups and plates and saucers in perfect condition.

 Some of the stuff we keep, some we sell, much we give away.  I’ve even given away stuff anonymously to other dealers at the flea market, just for the fun of it.

And the flow keeps flowing–thank you, thank you, oh great and good Dumpster Deva!

Curse you, Cellular One!

There should be a special place in corporate hell for cell phone companies in general, and Cellular One in particular.  I know, there are worse businesses–crack dealers, white slavers, Wal-Mart, the pharmaceutical companies and the Republican Party spring to mind.  But few companies are hated more and with more reason.  And this isn’t just my own opinion–a recent national survey said that cell phone comnpanies are right up there with used car dealers in being the most hated businesses in the contry.  Now think about it.

Used car dealers have been with us almost as long as there have been cars–say 100 years or so.  This is a lot of time to earn a rotten reputation, and develope the special skills of lying, cheating, and outright fraud that distinguish the used-car business.  Cell phone outfits have only been around a relatively short time, but they have used that time well, developing their hellish reputations.  And with cause.  Here is my cell  phone horror story.

Last summer, I finally got a cell phone so I wouldn’t have to scurry around to find a pay phone every time I wanted to call my sweety.  The closest one to my cabin was at a Tesoro station on the highway, and our conversations would cease every time a train , or some nitwit on a four-wheeler, or some pill-headed trucker or some blamed biker went by–and many bikers equate loud pipes with safety, never mind that the noise makes many of us want to cap their asses.  But I digress.

Overcoming my (well-founded) technophobia, I talked to the nice lady at the AT&A kiosk at Wal-mart.  The phone I wnated (a free Nokia) had been unavailable all summer (or so she said).  So I settled for a $49 Motorola, which was acceptable.  The thing only had three games, a calculator, a voice recorder, and (I think) a time machine built into it–relatively no-frills, in other words.  What the hell I need with a phone I can play poker with, or use to figure out my taxes with is totally beyond me–go figure.  Anyway, I bought the thing and slowly got used to the hassle and stress of the “convenience.”  After the season, when I went home fifty miles up the valley, I discovered to my horror and chagrin that the damned thing was useless except as a paperweight where I live.  No calls, in or out.  We live in a cell phone black hole.

This summer when I moved back into town to work, I figured the thing would at least be useful then.  However, AT&T was swallowed up by Cellular One.  The first they did was raise the rates.  The second thing they did, evidently, was sell half of their equipment and lay off the engineers–service which had been marginal to begin with got way worse.

And it wasn’t just me.  Formerly happy ATT&T subscribers all over the state flooded the state complaint office with comnplaints.  The state officials, who had evidently been well-paid for their non-feasance, declined to  prosecute or even investigate.  I mean, shit, God forbid a state regulatory commission should actually regulate.  So we suffered in relative silence.  Except for the static on the line.

It got to where I couldn’t even call my own number (to check my voice mail) without getting “call failed.”  Fate intervened in the form of a bogus charge for a 100-minute call to the local public library.  I got through to the customer service people and convinced them that I had not, in fact, talked for over an hour and a half to some librarian–they cancelled the charge but assumed it was my fault, that I had forgotten to turn off the phone.  Not bloody likely, I say, but not toally impossible.  Anyway, while I was doing this, Kathy was calling them on a landline.  We both complained about the poor reception.  She was told that if I called customer service from my phone, at my location, the engineers could do some hocus-pocus to improve the reception.  I didn’t call, never believed it for a second, but Kathy kept after me and kept after me, so I finally got up at five in the damn morning (when the wait was shorter and night rates were in effect).  I had to get up anyway to call in a knife order to an east coast wholesaler.

The reception was perfect, wouldn’t you know it.  Anyway, I told the rep all about what Kathy had been told, she transferred me to an engineering rep, who had never heard of the hocus-pocus thing.  All she needed, she said, was my phone number and my physical location,and all she could do was submit a “trouble ticket” to the engineers. Any authorized person could have called from any phone in the world and it would not have made a difference.  Kathy had been lied to!  A big fat smelly juicy lie, no less.  I gloated big time, since times when I am proved right are few indeed, and I tend to make the most of them.

Anyway, the other day I got a message.  After three tries, I got through.  “Hi, this is Megan, . . .crackle, crackle. . . from ‘ellular One. . .crackle, crackle. . .the engineers. . .crackle crackle. . . and this should improve your reception. .crackle hiss pop. . . if you don’t crackle hiss pop. . .” The line was cut off at that point.

My split-personality cat!

I am a born-again pet-lover.  As a child, a beloved orange tabby was killed when she got up under the hood of my dad’s 1953 Chevy for the warmth.  He didn’t know she was there and her neck was broken when he started the car.  I remember holding her still-warm corpse and marvelling at how her little head rolled around so freely.  That hurt so much that I totally shut down to critters for, oh, say fifty years or so.

Now all I have to do is see a dog riding in the back of someone’s pickup truck, and it makes my day.  Dogs and cats have so much more grace and beauty and dignity than most of the domesticated primates I see shambling around.  But I digress.

Silky is a gray and white dink who sort of adopted me after having been abandoned at Felony Flats  along with her two sisters, Smoky and Spooky.  I once had hopes of taking them all up  the valley with me at the end of summer, but Smoky and Spooky have bonded–I can’t break up the set and Spooky is too, well, spooky to be caught.  And Silky–well, for a while I thought that taking her home would work, but now I see I was wrong.

She has not bonded with any critter but me that I can see, and therein lies the problem.  She often sleeps on my bed, and when I wake and stir, she pads up beside me for purrs and head-butts and pets.  She sits on my lap while I watch TV sometimes.  She follows me to the dumpster when I take out trash.  She even follows me to the outhouse.  But we have two other cats and home, and a very friendly but undisciplined dog–and she don’t deal with other cats well.

If another cat so much as gets on my porch, she hisses and growls.  Once, Cassie ( a sort of multi-color polydactyl) came into the cabin and started eating Silky’s food.  Silky–who was on the bed–flattened her ears and hissed and growled.  Cassie ignored her, finished eating, and started to mosey around the cabin–it is only 10×12 feet, so that didn’t take long.  Then she jumped up onto the bed–that did it!  Silky erupted like a furry Catherine wheel, spinning and spitting and snarling.  Cassie then casually vacated the cabin–”I was ready to leave anyway” she might have said.  Silky then darted under the bed, staying there long enough to shit on the boxes of supplies and merchandise I had stored there–she even managed to get shit on the wall!  Then she shot out of the cabin heading south and I didn’t see her for two days.

She has mellowed a tad since–Cassie was in last night for a snack and Silky was okay with it.  Cassie stayed off the bed this time.  But last night, just after I had bedded down, turned off the light and all, with Silky on the bed–I heard this muffled thump, and still another neighborhood cat came in through the window.  GROOWLLL!  Silky was not amused, and the other cat (a striped polydactyl I named Jailbird due to her stripes and generally furtive air) beat a hasty retreat as soon as I slid open the door.  (My cabin is odd–instead of a proper door, it has a sliding glass patio window/door.)

Silky stayed under the table for a while, but kept control of her bowels–thank goodness–and got back on the bed a few hours later.  Peace reigned again in my own private wild kingdom.

I feel spiffy, oh so spiffy. . . .

I have always loved clothes.  As a kid, we were poor–got most of my clothes from the Spiegel catalogue or Robert Hall’s.  I always envied the rich kids in their Ban-Lons.  (Remember them?  They were polo shirts made of some nylon and had a gathered waist, so we were allowed to wear them without tucking them in.  All other shirts had to be tucked in, and t-shirts hadn’t been invented yet. )  Things looked up  after my dad got a civil service job, and I at least had a Madras sport coat  when I was a freshman in college.

One of my first jobs, I worked in a camera store and one of the owners always wore Countess Mara ties.  I got one for Christmas from my mother-in-law, wore it for about 20 years until it finally got too ragged to look decent.  As a state worker, I ALWAYS wore  Countess Maras, and felt very clever since I got mine at the Junior League Bargain Box instead of paying the outrageous store prices ($25 at Wanamaker’s in 1978).

Now that I am in Alaska and officially poor, though, things are different.  For years I wore mostly raggedy-ass stuff. Actually, during that time I was so busy getting loaded and and feeling sorry for myself that many of those years blur together. I do remember wearing clean jeans and a sport coat to some of Doug’s school events, awards ceremoinies and plays and stuff. (Doug is SuSu’s son.)  I should say, were different.  Thanks to bag sales at one of the local  thrift shops, I can wear things that I could not afford before.  Before, I had a few Brooks Brothers shirts I went to New York City to get, but mostly wore, say, Arrow.  Not bad, but far from top-shelf.  I did have one Calvin Klein suit, but I mostly got my suits at the yearly sale at some upscale men’s shop, the name of which I will remember as soon as I get off the comp.

What brought this on was two things–one, SuSu called me a clothes horse in one of her blogs and that got me to looking at myself in the sartorial splendor department, and two, this is Wasilla market day, held in the grassy historical area in town.  Since I am not working in the dusty, gritty flea market, I can dress up a tad.  Boy, did I dress up today.

I’m wearing real shoes, for thing thing, instead of the usual sneakers.  Arnold Palmer suede casuals, to be precise. (Cost $4.50.) And Haggar Black Label slacks instead of the usual Dockers or jeans.  And a Ralph Lauren dress shirt.(Got both of these at bag sales, paid maybe a buck for both of them.) And–I saved the best for last–an honest-to-God Brooks Brothers Harris tweed Golden Fleece sports coat–cost new, I dunno–maybe $300-500 or so.  I got it for about $2 at a bag sale.  Oh, and I am topped off with a snazzy fedora my sweety got on-line for me a few years ago when we were relatively flush–it cost $20 on-line, would have cost $60 in a store.  And in case it warms up a lot today, I have a really neat silk sports shirt in the car.  The shirt cost next to nothing.

It occurs to me that as Valley trash goes, I am virtually  a metrosexual.  I have almost all my teeth, after all, and I sometimes clean my nails. I trim them instead of just letting them break off.  And I have taken two showers already this week. (Then again, it HAS been extraordinarily hot recently.,  Normally, one or two showers a week in the summertime works for me.)  Hell, lots of us go weeks or months between showers.  I use anti-perspirant. 

I’m even wearing a gold Seiko watch.  Okay, gold-plated.  Maybe it’s not even real gold, and it’s 40 years old or so, inherited it from my dad, along with the alcoholism gene.  All things considered, I prefer the watch.

Update/Preview/Warning

Captain Blogfodder is sort of on hiatus–lost momentum and my notes at the same time, maybe the cat ate’em.  More likely, they are just lost in the clutter of my car or warehouse. . .er, cabin.  I haven’t given up on the Captain, however.  But  I DO have a new idea, thanks to SuSu.

She used the word “crips” in a recent blog, I relaized that cribs and tards sounded like rival gangs.  Well, duh, Crips IS the name of a gang.  Anyway, I decided to try a take-off of West Side Story, with the rival gangs being the Gimps and the Tards.  (“When you’re a Gimp, you’re a Gimp all the way, from your first clumsy step to your last chair-bound day.)

Thing is, I’ve sorta done this before.  In high school, I wrote a musical comedy parody of Oedipus Rex–called it “Incest Side Story.”

Dunno what I’ll call this one.  “Ramp Glide Story”?  Nah, that’s lame.

Stay tuned.

Food, firearms, and fantasy!

Believe it or not, I have a quick and violent temper.  I also have great impulse control, which is why I haven’t killed anyone since the last century.  I usually carry a gun, but so far, no one I met has seemed to need killing badly enough for me to spend the rest of my life in stir.  But I digress.

I live in a 10′ by 12′ cabin cum warehouse.  Space is sadly limited.  My “kitchen” consists of a small fridge, a microwave oven, and a wee coffeemaker.  My food prep space is roughly the size of a Mauritanian commemorative stamp.  So when I make sandwiches, I put the bread on my bed, maybe balance the lettuce on top of the TV, put the lunchmeat on the chair (and hope against hope the cat doesn’t notice it), and so forth.

This is kinda nerve-wracking, and sometimes by the time the sandwich has been manifested on this plane, I’m a nervous wrack.  Uh, wreck.  Whatever.  Making it worse is the fact that sandwich bags are always just a hair too small for my macho sandwiches–they might do for dainty little girly-man cucumber sandwiches, maybe, but I sometimes rip off part of the crust so I can jam the thing into the Zip-Loc.  I put in lots of lunchmeat and a thick slab of pepper jack  and the maximum amount of lettuce allowed by law and so on.

The other day, I was having more trouble than usual with this, and for one mad moment, I thought about hurling the damned thing on the floor and shooting it.  Reason prevailed.  However, for much of the rest of the day, the following kept running through my head:

“I shot the sandwich–(but I didn’t kill the BLT).”

Over and over and over, complete with reggae chorus. 

Sheesh!

I’m gettin’ better!

Monty Python fans will note the quote, I think it’s from MP and the Holy Grail.  Anyway, I AM gettin’ better.

Dunno if it’s because of new meds (I’m taking more EFAs and eleuthero), or because of an attitude adjustment or because I had a few good business days or because my fibro pains and fibro-fog have become less obvious.  Probably some combination.

Anyway, I intend to use my power more in the future, and create good days regardless of how my physical plant is working or regardless of the weather et cetera.

AND I am currently reading Ghosts by Ed McBain–couldn”t find it with the search thingie.