FTW

I just heard a couple days ago that people are not allowed to flag down a passing taxicab for a ride here in Los Angeles.

"It's not IF your pet monkey is going to attack you, but WHEN."

FTW. (Fuck The World.) I got it tattooed on my left forearm during the first half of 1968. I was twenty-two and going nuts. Everything suddenly got good toward the end of the year when a little redhead was given to me for my twenty-third birthday. She turned out to be my psychological savior. She pointed out ways of looking at life that made it not be so overwhelming, no matter what was actually happening. Ever since then, FTW has been a grinnin' attitude, not a snivelin' lament. Thank you, Gerri, wherever you are.

A fast-food executive was being interviewed on TV the other day. He was asked about a boycott of his chain of restaurants being promoted by a conservative group because his company had supported an organization they didn't like. The executive said they weren't concerned, that they would never feel such a boycott. He said if the boycott was about the environment or gay rights, then they'd be worried about it costing them business. The pendulum swings, as they say.

It's gotta be like a sick joke, right? Every night on "the news" they give yet another example of our imminent demise, followed by both candidates promising to get gas prices back down and the economy rolling again like the good old days. Today it was the death of ocean coral. The other day the story was alligators going blind. A week ago it was the disappearing salmon and the stopping of all commercial salmon fishing. Fires, record-shattering storms, rising temperatures, dead spots in the oceans. The melting ice caps and the plight of the polar bears is old news, now the stories are all about the new drilling the oil companies can do in the Arctic Circle with the ice gone. We need bees to pollinate our food, but they can't find their way home anymore, possibly because of cell phones. The Earth was a perfect life-support system for hundreds of millions of years, until the Stock Market hit town. Mindless profits know no limits.

It being summertime, I of course have been thinking a lot about "the road". Hitchhiking up and down the West Coast for twenty-two years, Daylight Savings Time was my High Holiday. Summer was the best. I could just roll out my sleeping bag and sleep anywhere. Swimming in rivers, being a guide for fun tourists, backyard volleyball, giving runaway girls from Back East a friendly California welcome, psychedelic softball in mountain meadows, concerts and gatherings and barbecues. (I found that if you have a drivers license and can cook, people are always glad to see you. And if you don't deal, steal or get rowdy drunk, the cops leave you alone. Staying clean of course helps with all of the above. That can be the hardest thing on the road, finding a shower. Way harder than sex, drugs, or food. But even that can be an adventure out there.) Now I need pills to stay alive and couldn't get up in the morning if I slept on the ground in my trusty sleeping bag. I think of my tiny hotel room as a campsite in the trees of a favorite on-ramp up north, only with a sink and a door. But try as I may, there's just no replacing all the different people I used to get to meet every day, free of knowing anybody they knew or ever expecting to see them again, so there was a real openness that most normal, day-to-day encounters can't risk. High stuff, month after month after month. (Details upon request.)

Okay, I'm calling it a day. I watched my usual Leno monologue, and tonight being Monday, "Headlines". I washed all my bedding today, so I'm looking forward to stretching out for the night. (Cheap Thrills.) They're calling for another heat wave starting tomorrow and the air conditioning is broken here in my hotel--it sure works in January and February, but never in the summer. I haven't figured that one out yet.

Plant Your Seeds.