When There's Something Strange In Your Neighborhood
Poking around in other peoples' public bloggery is one of the millions of exciting things to do during attacks of agoraphobia. It's also let me know that Hungary-Bound Girl-- the emotionally damaged, slitheringly manipulative girl who spent last summer listing reasons I was a piece of shit but still sobbed like crazy when I wouldn't hang out with her (and, you know, if I think someone's a piece of shit I usually don't wanna hang out with 'em)-- got married a couple months ago. At Voodoo Doughnut, of all places. There are pictures of the bride and groom smooching beneath the sprinkled, six-foot-wide doughnut bolted onto the wall. She has purplish hair now and the dude looks strikingly like me, except he's nine years older. Hungary-Bound Girl is 27 and this is her second marriage, but the fact that she's gotten married again is less surprising than her having gained about 60 pounds in the past year. This is a girl who claimed she loved me when she knew next to nothing about me and had, in fact, only seen my most guarded, quietly reticent, broke and depressed, short-fused and kinda-horrified side. I wasn't doing so well then. But I guess it's good that she's gotten what she needed.
Last week I returned to the clinic for people with no fucking money and no fucking insurance and had my doctor there double my dose of anti-fucked-up pills. Maybe they will help make me vaguely un-fucked-up.
Today's neighborhood spotlight goes to this weaselly little ponytailed dude in a brand new cranberry-colored hoodie with a skeletal ribcage printed on it. He's friends with the Fried-Blonde Junkie and they've been spending more mornings than not sitting in front of the Starbucks and screaming at everyone who walks by. They do this for hours. Weirdly, none of the managerial Starbucks staff seems to care. Today, it was damp, grey, and as a result pretty calm outside, so the hoodied guy was standing in the rain in the middle of the intersection, flailing his arms and screaming, at nobody in particular, "WHERE'S ALL THE FREAKINESS? THIS INTERSECTION IS FUCKIN' SUPPOSED TO BE FREAKY! I THOUGHT THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FREAKY BERKELEY, MAN!" To make things sufficiently freaky, he ran to the sidewalk and began angrily kicking newspaper boxes off the curb and into the street.
He came back again around 9:30 at night, when there was already a block-long line of viewers for the Bagdad's 11 PM screening of Ghostbusters. (This means that there will be a bunch of drunken hipsters singing the theme song under my window around one AM, but I'm prepared for that. Besides, I usta belt it out in gym class all the time when I was in the first grade.) The guy was slowly spinning in the middle of the street again, both of his middle fingers raised in the air. He kept shouting, "GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!" People in line for Ghostbusters were yelling for him to shuddup, but that only encouraged him. He stood yelling at the bus stop, next to an aging hippie who'd been peacefully strumming a mandolin outside Oasis for the past five hours. When the bus slowed down and stopped, the hoodie guy exchanged a few words with the driver, then immediately lost his temper and started flipping her off, shouting, "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU, BITCH! FUCK YOU!"... I can only assume because she wouldn't let 'im ride the bus for free. ("i guess liberty = free shit," observed dehumidifier IM-style.)
And then, I'm not sure how this happened, but he started kicking at the mandolin player's jeans and before I knew it, he had the old guy in a violent headlock and they were tugging at each other's oily ponytails. I was transfixed at my window, wondering whether I should run out there and beat him with the iron trash can cover out there. This was going on right outside the Oasis while they were open, but like the Starbucks staff, they were pretty blase about it. Ghostbusters fans rushed across the street as hoodie prick pounded the old man in his balding forehead and inexplicably shouted, "THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE, MOTHERFUCKER!" A guy threw himself on the pair, and the hoodie guy started pounding him in the head, too. Finally enough people had run over and torn them all apart. They kept shouting for the hoodie guy to just walk away and not come back. They were pissed. The old hippie was crumpled in a doorway (amazingly, not mine). But the hoodie guy just stood there flipping everyone off, fingers stretched high into the air.
"JUST GO WATCH YER FUCKIN' MOVIE, ASSHOLES," he whined. As he finally staggered off, he was yelling, "GO JERK OFF, ASSHOLES. HOW MANY O' YOU ASSHOLES ARE GONNA JERK OFF TONIGHT? A LOT, I'LL BET! SHAME ON EVERY FUCKING ONE OF YOU-- THIS IS FUCKING DEMOCRACY!"
Within a few minutes, the old guy was up on his feet and strumming his mandolin again. And I'm sure the hoodied prick will also be back first thing in the morning to holler again, if not sooner.
This is the second time I've seen an old man get his ass beat out there by a 19/20-year-old for no reason. I guess that's what it takes to satisfy some peoples' cravings for freakiness.
Last week I returned to the clinic for people with no fucking money and no fucking insurance and had my doctor there double my dose of anti-fucked-up pills. Maybe they will help make me vaguely un-fucked-up.
Today's neighborhood spotlight goes to this weaselly little ponytailed dude in a brand new cranberry-colored hoodie with a skeletal ribcage printed on it. He's friends with the Fried-Blonde Junkie and they've been spending more mornings than not sitting in front of the Starbucks and screaming at everyone who walks by. They do this for hours. Weirdly, none of the managerial Starbucks staff seems to care. Today, it was damp, grey, and as a result pretty calm outside, so the hoodied guy was standing in the rain in the middle of the intersection, flailing his arms and screaming, at nobody in particular, "WHERE'S ALL THE FREAKINESS? THIS INTERSECTION IS FUCKIN' SUPPOSED TO BE FREAKY! I THOUGHT THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FREAKY BERKELEY, MAN!" To make things sufficiently freaky, he ran to the sidewalk and began angrily kicking newspaper boxes off the curb and into the street.
He came back again around 9:30 at night, when there was already a block-long line of viewers for the Bagdad's 11 PM screening of Ghostbusters. (This means that there will be a bunch of drunken hipsters singing the theme song under my window around one AM, but I'm prepared for that. Besides, I usta belt it out in gym class all the time when I was in the first grade.) The guy was slowly spinning in the middle of the street again, both of his middle fingers raised in the air. He kept shouting, "GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!" People in line for Ghostbusters were yelling for him to shuddup, but that only encouraged him. He stood yelling at the bus stop, next to an aging hippie who'd been peacefully strumming a mandolin outside Oasis for the past five hours. When the bus slowed down and stopped, the hoodie guy exchanged a few words with the driver, then immediately lost his temper and started flipping her off, shouting, "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU, BITCH! FUCK YOU!"... I can only assume because she wouldn't let 'im ride the bus for free. ("i guess liberty = free shit," observed dehumidifier IM-style.)
And then, I'm not sure how this happened, but he started kicking at the mandolin player's jeans and before I knew it, he had the old guy in a violent headlock and they were tugging at each other's oily ponytails. I was transfixed at my window, wondering whether I should run out there and beat him with the iron trash can cover out there. This was going on right outside the Oasis while they were open, but like the Starbucks staff, they were pretty blase about it. Ghostbusters fans rushed across the street as hoodie prick pounded the old man in his balding forehead and inexplicably shouted, "THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE, MOTHERFUCKER!" A guy threw himself on the pair, and the hoodie guy started pounding him in the head, too. Finally enough people had run over and torn them all apart. They kept shouting for the hoodie guy to just walk away and not come back. They were pissed. The old hippie was crumpled in a doorway (amazingly, not mine). But the hoodie guy just stood there flipping everyone off, fingers stretched high into the air.
"JUST GO WATCH YER FUCKIN' MOVIE, ASSHOLES," he whined. As he finally staggered off, he was yelling, "GO JERK OFF, ASSHOLES. HOW MANY O' YOU ASSHOLES ARE GONNA JERK OFF TONIGHT? A LOT, I'LL BET! SHAME ON EVERY FUCKING ONE OF YOU-- THIS IS FUCKING DEMOCRACY!"
Within a few minutes, the old guy was up on his feet and strumming his mandolin again. And I'm sure the hoodied prick will also be back first thing in the morning to holler again, if not sooner.
This is the second time I've seen an old man get his ass beat out there by a 19/20-year-old for no reason. I guess that's what it takes to satisfy some peoples' cravings for freakiness.