10=2=24, 7 PM

Dear Mary and Lee,

As if things were not already dire, at about 4PM CDT, my phone stopped working. It won't boot-up; what's even more annoying, it keeps repeating "Hello, Moto!" every sixty seconds. I finally wrapped it in a towel and a blanket and put it in the bathroom because I couldn't bear to hear it anymore. The phone is/was ( Read more... )

Went to get my prescriptions refilled at the pharmacy about a half mile from the end of one of The Unknown City's streetcar lines. The last station on this particular line is named, improbably, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Thereby hangs a tale. In the early  Sixties, The Unknown City built a massive housing development there named the Forest Housing ( Read more... )

I am going to have to go into the Ray of Light Mission in the bad section of downtown in The Unknown City. Here's how the Ray of Light Mission works. You have to line up for a bunk every day. Get there an hour early. The line is, of course, longer in winter and in rainy weather. If they fill up the beds, you sleep in the street.  You have to be out ( Read more... )

We have the updated roster of the Apocalypse, boys and girls! Trump is the Antichrist, Elon Musk is the False Prophet, and Laura Loomer is the Whore of Babylon! Get your tickets now--time is running out!

ETA: Also, at the risk of getting banned, how does That Fucking Gangster Putin fit in, with his collaboration with the Iranians?

II

I met Murder ( Read more... )

*  A million different varieties of sports drinks, energy drinks, protein shakes, probiotic sodas. Nobody seems to drink Coke anymore. And don't order "plain coffee" in a Starbucks. You will be laughed at and pointed at.

* "Gluten-free," "peanut allergy," "soy-free," "keto," "lactose intolerant," etc. etc. etc. When I get the money, I'm going to do ( Read more... )

Me:  I thought I would leave from the bus stop right across from the hotel, for safety. But I outsmarted myself: I got here and there was a bum lying full-length on the bench. Hope he's not violent. (laughing emoji) First bus of the day arrives in ten minutes.

Mary: (thumbs up)

***time passes***

Me: Well, I give up. I just give the fuck up. After I ( Read more... )

I am at the library waiting for the job center workshop to begin. I was reading Abraham Lincoln: The War Years I by Carl Sandburg while I was waiting, and I came across this sentence: "South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for a lunatic asylum." I defy anyone to read this book and not see any contemporary parallels. Abolitionists ( Read more... )

You cannot get to the library from the tunnels, but you can get to within a block of it. You can't go directly into City Hall because there's a metal detector, nor can you get to the library basement. You have to come up for air just before the metal detector and stroll through the park . . .

. . . where a mentally-troubled maniac is declaiming ( Read more... )

New things I still haven't quite adjusted to yet:

*   the word "Karen" to describe an entitled, spoiled, narcissistic woman

*   no mailboxes (because nobody gets paper mail anymore)

*   hardly any newspapers or magazines (everything's online)

*   no cabs (only Uber, Lyft, etc.)

*   influencers: people who are apparently famous for being famous (e.g ( Read more... )

Me: Turn on CNN. Someone just tried to assassinate your boy.

Mary: I've been watching it on X.

Me: [dumbfounded emoji]

Mary: Trump is a great man. You may not like him, but how he responded to this is epic.

Me: Oh, I'm just as shocked as anyone else. . . . Did a bullet graze his head? He has blood on his face.

Mary: Yes, he was hit just above his ( Read more... )