New Nonfiction!: Our Efficient Government

A bunch of months back I got a ticket for not yielding for pedestrians during a sting operation one of the most dangerous streets in LA (in my defense, there were no lights, no signs and the position of the crosswalk wasn't standard; also, I did stop--twice--but the cop didn't care, he was a dick). So I get the ticket and, being homeless and living in my van at the time, it was the least of my concerns so I forgot about it.

Later, I forget to pay the fine on time. Or I didn't pay it because I couldn't afford it. Either way, never paid.

Even laterer, after I get an apartment in Hollywood that has roaches and asshole landlords and a stink that never goes away, I get a notice warning me of my license being revoked if I don't take care of the ticket by such and such date.

Such and such date arrives, so I get up early (like 5:30 ish) and make my way to the courthouse. I park down the street at a meter and drop in a couple quarters. It's crowded with Mexicans and Black folk who aren't dressed like they're about to talk to a judge. They all look mean. I'm in line, outside this very bulky nine story building that has extravagantly used these neat little rocks to cover the entire outside, all the way around and up and waiting in line for so many hours I wondered just how many mountains were killed for this building to be dressed in a nice coat like that. Then I thought that there should be an environmental organization that works like PETA, but I realized that could never work because they couldn't get Pamela Anderson to show up on billboards wearing only rocks.

So I finally get inside and I talk to a clerk at a window and that woman asks me if I'm here to pay and I says to her, No, I'm pleading not guilty. So she sets up a date for me to arrive in court--8/30 at 8:30--easy enough to remember. So then I leave and discover the meter was up and I'm given a $45 ticket.

Skip ahead two months. I wake up early (this time, 5:45) and I go to court. I get lost because this time I don't have the address. Also, I don't have my paperwork. Turns out, I didn't need the paperwork nearly as much as the address. I arrive at the building around 7:20 and decide to pay the $7 to park in the underground parking facility. The line is nowhere near as long as it was before, which gives me hope that people are finally learning their lesson about driving like assholes. I doubt this is true, but for the sake of argument, let's just pretend. Unfortunately, as I later discover, less people means stiffer fines for those who're still there. So I stand in line again, and around 8:30 they let us into the building. I go to the 4th floor, to room #63 as per instructions. I stand in line at the sign that says, "Line Starts Here." I'm thinking, yey, I'm first in line. Smiling to myself and thinking that my day is going well so far, I hear this woman bark from across the hallway where she sits on a bench--obviously not where the sign is marking--and she says, "I'm first." She's black and I'm white, so obviously I'm either going to be a racist or she's going to shoot me, so I says to her, fine. Then, about three or so more people arrive and stand in line. She warns them all that she's first in line. I step out of the line to go down the hall to use the restroom (#1), and when I get back, there's like 40 people all materialized out of nowhere to take my place in line. I say fuck it, I don't want to argue. Turns out, I don't need to. We get inside the room, finally, and we take a seat, then after another bout of sitting around doing nothing, they call names. I'm like #4, well ahead of the girl who was first in line. So I win. Ha.

So we wait and wait and wait. Finally, a temporary judge (not the real thing, apparently, because the real thing was on vacation) comes out and we give our pleas. I tell him not guilty. The ticket was supposed to be $140, plus the fine for not showing up to court, which was another $200, but that should be waived if I win my trial. This wasn't trial, this was arraignment, so he says go talk to the clerk about bail. I'm thinking, wow, bail--I must really be a criminal now!

So another line (I thought I was the fourth person, now I'm back in a long line again, somehow) and finally the clerk, and the clerk tells me bail is $340. I'm like, that's sure a steep fine for a $100 ticket. They tell me that if I can't pay it (I can't, I'm as broke as I've ever been) then I have to come back in exactly seven days to tell the judge that I can't pay it. I ask why they can't just make a note to tell the judge later that I can't pay it so I don't have to go through all this trouble. She looks at me like her brain is about to esplode, so I decide to leave. I go home and think about taking a nap, but I probably just jerked off and ate a pizza. I don't remember, but that sounds pretty much like my everyday existance, so it's probably what I did. I do remember though that I certainly did not take a nap.

Skip ahead another week. My van is falling apart. I wake up around 6:15, shower and eat a cup of boysenberry yogurt. It wasn't the best yogurt I've had recently, but it wasn't bad--not like the raspberry/cranberry juice that I bought the same trip, which I had to return because it was fermented; they asked, with attitude, why I was bringing it back and I told them I came to buy juice, not wine. So I ate the yogurt, brushed the teeth and headed out the door. I found the courthouse without as much hassle as the first time, although I did drive around for about 10 minutes trying to locate the street (Hill street--I didn't know that last time, which is why it took me so long. I thought it was on Figueroa) and I find a great parking spot at a meter across the street--only 2 hours, though, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to get a ticket again.

I wait in line but it seems to go faster this time. Also, I feel like I recognize a lot of the people in line, and all the sudden I'm feeling like I'm in the Truman Show. I'm not, of course, but I had that weird feeling. So I get inside and remembering the last two times, I decided to buy a newspaper. I thought it might pass the time by reading about the hurricane and the ineptitude of the BushCo, but they don't have the USA today, which I like. I don't like the LA times, which they had. So I bought an iced tea in a can and went up to the fourth floor.

Again, I was pretty far up in line. No one bitched about their spots. We went in and sat down. I sat and sat and sat, then sat some more. People's names we called, they were lined up; more people came in and they were lined up. I was the fourth person in line and I was goddamn moved to the back of the goddamn bus. Pissed me off. Then the judge--a real one!--came out. He was a dick. One woman, the second person in line, gave him lip and instead of being hit with a $120 ticket, she was given over $4,000 in bail! I was like, holy shitfuck.

The line progresses quickly because the judge was efficient, but he was also a dick. I knew I was there just to tell the judge that I couldn't afford $340 bail on a $120 ticket I didn't deserve, so I figured I was going to be okay. When he asked what I'm going to plead--guilty, not guilty or no contest--I told him I plead not guilty last week. He says, "Okay, $600 bail and come back in a week." I'm like, "Huh? I came back to tell you today that I can't pay the $300 bail." He's like, "I'm not giving you any leniency--you didn't show up to court when you were supposed to." I said, "I'm not looking for leniency, I'm here to tell you I can't afford this three hundred bucks and I'm going to argue not guilty." He's looking at me like why the fuck am I still in his line. I said, "I'm following the orders, I was told to come back today. So why am I getting my fine doubled?" He tells me to get out of his line and start listening. I yell back, "I am listening, that's why I'm here today instead of at home, sleeping." He waits, unrelenting. I'm confused and furious. Finally, I'm told to leave the podium. I tell him I want to change my plea then. He says good, notates the paperwork and tells me to move on.

I leave to the clerk's place and stand in line again. It's a huge line and takes an hour to get to the window. The woman says I owe $269. I ask her to break it down for me. She does. I tell her I can't pay it. She says I've got three months. I leave and find out that, although my meter had expired at hour ago, they didn't give me a ticket. I drive home. An hour later, my boss calls and asks if I can come into work. I say sure--I'm fucking broke, I've got bills due and I don't have any money for gas or food. Although I was tired, I think I definitely needed to be here.

So that's one ticket that should've been really easy to take care of, but for whatever fucking reason it just wasn't. Here's the other ticket. I got this while coming home from work. My taillight was out and apparently I ran a stop sign that I never saw. Still don't think it was there, but they didn't ticket me for the stop sign, so I don't care. What they ticketed me for was no registration and a busted taillight.

So I ignore the ticket and go back to filming my movie. In one scene, the main character taps the window with a gun. I ask my actor to do this. He does, and it splinters my windshield. Over the next several weeks, this splinter grows until my window is divided in half and is nearly impossible to drive (although I tough it out and do it anyway).

So I take the van to the DMV to get it registered. I pay them $217 in back fees and whatnot, and they tell me that they can't register it until the window gets fixed. Then I go to the Beverly Hills court house to show them the temporary registration and they tell me they can't take temporary registration, and they tell me that as soon as I get my taillight fixed, I have to get it inspected by the sheriffs department downstairs. They give me two months to get everything worked out.

Then, the next week, several weeks ago, both my jobs end and I wait six weeks with no money, waiting for unemployment to unfuck themselves long enough to send me my checks. They finally come, the same week both my jobs start again.

Skip ahead several weeks. To yesterday, actually. Columbus Day. What the fuck kind of holiday is Columbus day? There should be three holidays and three holidays only--St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, New Years/New Years Eve. That's it, everything else is bullshit.

So I stay up late Sunday night schooling some friends in poker. I've been on a losing streak ever since the cult meet-up, but I finally get back in a grove. I only won $50, but at least it's something. So I get home and go to bed around 3 or so. The next morning at 8, I get a call from the guys who're supposed to come by around noon to fix my van's window. They're early. I roll off the couch and head outside. They say it'll be an hour to fix it. I say to call me when they're done and I'm going to take a nap. 30 minutes later, they wake me up again. It's done and it'll cost me $275.00. So cool, they're efficient, but fuck I'm tired. They say don't drive for at least an hour, so around 10:30 I take it up the street to these Armenian auto shop guys who say they can fix the light. I've already done what I can (check the fuse, change the bulb, etc) but it's still not working. They say it'll be a couple hours, so I walk home and go to bed. They call a couple hours later, saying it's done and it'll be $60. Not a big deal.

So I drive to the DMV to get the window inspected and get my registration, but they're fucking closed because of goddamn Columbus day. So that means I've got to go to work and not get home until 3 in the morning and then have to get up early in order to take care of all this at the very last minute (seriously legitimately not my fault, since I had no money because of the Unemployment Department). So I get up this morning and go to the DMV. I get there at 10:15. I wait in line until 10:40. The lady gives me a number and tells me to take a seat after I explain that I'm only there to get inspected, that I've already paid for everything. So I sit, and I sit and I sit, and finally at 11:35 I get called to window 17. The woman is about to leave for lunch, but she explains that I should've taken my van to the inspection station out back. I tell her that the other woman should've told me this, it would've saved me an hour. She says she agrees and tells me it's time for her to leave for lunch. I tell her I didn't see a parking area and she says it's really small and hard to spot because it doesn't have any markers. I leave and move my van around and finally find where she's talking about.

I wait another 30 minutes until I can park my van in one of the two inspection spots. The inspector checks everything out and okays it and gives me a piece of paper. I go inside, skipping all the people in line who're frowning at me and tell the clerk that she should've told me to go there first. She gives me a number and I sit down. I wait about 15 minutes until I'm called to window 12. I get my plates and I'm out of there.

The drive to Beverly Hills sucks. Traffic sucks. Most of Southern California sucks, but Santa Monica blvd. sucks the hardest. So I get there and I park as close to the courthouse/sheriffs department as I can. I go inside and go through the metal detector. One of the guys compliments my shirt.

I walk to the sheriffs department and tell her I'm here to have my taillight inspected. She tells me to move my car out back. So I leave and walk half a mile to my car and move it to where I need it, then walk back inside. Another of the security guards sees me, and jokes about my passing through the metal detectors a second time. I go to the sheriffs department and hand her my paperwork again. Once more she looks it over, then tells me she needs mt to go upstairs and get a copy of my ticket. I wonder why she didn't tell me that earlier.

I go upstairs to the DMV and wait and wait and wait in line for a clerk to put down her fucking donut and newspaper and start paying attention to the line. It's also hot because they don't pay for AC. So tell her I need my ticket. She complies. I go downstairs and give it to the sheriff's clerk. She tells me I need to go back upstairs and pay it. I tell her that I need to get the taillight ok'd before I can pay it. She says there's no mention of a taillight on the ticket. I show her on the ticket where it says something like "B/O rear - to fix" or something and I says, I'm pretty sure that's what they're talking about. She says oh, yeah, that's right, but they don't inspect taillights here. I tell her that 2 months ago I was told to come here today to have it inspected. She says she doesn't know why. I say why is there an inspection station out back if they don't inspect things. She says they just don't inspect taillights. I say how hard would it be for you to look at my taillight to prove it works. She says I need to go to some place where they do smog checks, they might also inspect taillights. I ask if she can be more specific. She says no. I tell her it's 3:30 and they close at 4:30 and I have to get this done today because yesterday I couldn't because it was Columbus fucking day and it's the last day I have on this extension. She says too damn bad. I leave the building, the decide to go talk to the DMV clerk one more time.

I pass the security guard who jokes that I just must love this stuff. I growl.

I go upstairs and tell the clerk who sent me downstairs that I just want to pay the ticket. She says I can't without getting it inspected. I tell her to look out the window and she can see my van and I'll run down stairs and tap the break lights. She says no. So I ask her if I can get an extension until tomorrow. She says no. She says I need to come back on November 8th to talk with a judge. I tell her I'm just doing what I've been told to do--go to the sheriffs department--and it's causing all this fucking headache. She says she doesn't give a flying shit. I reach over the counter and break her nose. Then I leave a comment on a card in the comment box telling them their inefficiency and incompetence is costing me money and having me run around in circles. So there.

I should point out that this fix it ticket is for THIRTY FUCKING DOLLARS.

And now I'm at work and I just ate a really bad sammich.

****

UPDATE:

They do street cleanings on Wednesdays and Fridays, depending on the side of the street. I was parked on the Friday side and at 10:15 I went out to move my van. We're not allowed to park from 10 - noon, and when I got out there, the parking meter whore was on her way down the street, so I just barely escaped.

I move my van down the block after driving to a gas station to put some air in the rear right tire, which has a slow leak in it. Really slow. Then, I walk over and check my email a block away at this cafe that's really neat, and I walk back another couple blocks to my bank to transfer some funds. Then, I walk back over to my van as the street sweeper truck makes it's way down my road. By now, it's after 11, and since I've already witnessed them cleaning the street, I'm thinking it's safe to park. I get in my van and drive around the block and go inside and jerk off, then take a nap. I wake up, shower, get ready for my day and then head outside and there's a goddamn ticket on my window that's marked at 11:58--the bitch fucking watched me drive off earlier and came back to give me a ticket just before time expired, after the fucking truck already cleaned the street. What the fuck? And the number they have listed to contest the ticket doesn't have a number to press for "assfucked by the fascist street sweepers", nor do they actually have a real live person to complain to, just monotone computers.

So there goes another $45.

***

(Originally posted 10/11/2005 at www.chuckpalahniuk.net; reposted here for posterity.)

New Thing!: Jaywalking (Updated)

I went to sleep around 3 in the morning and set my alarm for 11, but when I woke up at 7:30 I thought to myself, you know what, you're awake and you feel good, why don't you walk to the court and deal with that jaywalking ticket, you know, get it off your mind? Boy, am I retarded and once more I got fucked by the California legal system.

To recap: July 4th on my way to see a movie I was pulled over by a couple cops who said a woman reported I had jaywalked. They issued a ticket. I left for Washington to work on a film and when I returned I found that the fine was originally $250 and was now, with fees included, $977.

Today, I went before a judge and he asked how I wanted to plead. I told him not guilty, and, thinking because my driver's license had my address listed way the hell away, I asked for a change of venue. He pretty much told me I was an idiot and should learn what the hell I'm talking about. He told me that had I pleaded guilty for this infraction he would've let me walk out of the court room with a $50 fine (which probably wasn't true - everyone before me who had similar cases were given light fines for the infraction and still had to pay the hefty fees for not showing up to deal with their ticket in a timely manner). He said furthermore, he thinks I'm foolish because, obviously, I'm guilty of the crime, and he set my bail at $977, which I have a week to pay, then he set my court date for further on down the road. I asked if I could change my plea - something which many people before me had done - and he ignored me and told the next person to come take the stand. So, basically, I can pay the $977 bail and go in front of the trial judge and try to convince him that the cops had not seen me jaywalking and had given me the ticket out of heresay - and the cops will probably be there to tell him that's a lie - and I'll get nailed with paying the bail amount, or I can go to court again tomorrow and ask the same judge if I can change my plea, and either he's going to make me look like an idiot in front of everybody or he's going to say, I'm glad you learned your lesson, now here's how much you have to pay... (probably the full $977, or what I might've been able to walk out of court paying today, which would've been $50 for the ticket plused the assest fines, which will probably amount to about $350, plus another $30 because I won't be able to pay the fine when I leave the court). All this for a goddamn jaywalking ticket given to me by hearsay!

Fuck yeah, California!

New Thing!: Jaywalking

In case you're wondering what type of slap on the wrist you would get for jaywalking in downtown Burbank, here it is: $977 bail + a hold placed on your driver's license.

To put this heinous crime in perspective, NFL Superdouche Lance Briggs of the Chicago Bears crashed his $350,000 car into a lamp post at 3:15 AM after doing god knows what, left the scene of the accident and reported the car stolen to the police. His fine? $1000.

New Nonfiction!: Given the Boot.

October 24th, 2006

So a few months back I got a ticket for having a busted headlight on my van. I eventually fixed the light, but within days, before I could go to the highway patrol to have them verify this, my transmission blew out. A couple weeks later, my registration was due but I decided not to reregister because I'd be trashing my vehicle come the beginning of December. So, after a while I recieved a letter telling me my license would be revoked on October 15th because of an unpaid ticket (the headlight). The only way I could fight this is by proving my headlight has been fixed, which means driving to the CHP office, which means getting my transmission fixed ($1300), and then getting my car registered (another $100 or so, probably more because it's late). So, for a fucking $10 fix-it ticket, all the sudden I'm $1500 or more in the hole.

Skip ahead to last night. I get off work, thinking all day long that it was Tuesday although I know for a fact that there's Monday Night Football going on. I've got my company's van and I'm going to be staying at a hotel. I decide to move my van across the street, where I thought I wouldn't be getting a ticket because street cleaning happened earlier "today". Remember - I'm thoroughly convinced yesterday was Tuesday. So this morning, I go to drop some shit off in my van before heading to work (unpaid, volunteering my time today, by the way) and I see my van has been booted. I'd recently paid off most my parking tickets but because my registration was up and I was parked illegally (street sweeping on Tuesdays mornings, 8 - 10), they had to throw the boot on. So, if I'd only left my van where it was yesterday, I'd be fine.

Here's the issue -- in order to get the boot off my van, now I have to register the vehicle ($100, maybe more), get the transmission fixed ($1300), pay off the rest of the parking tickets ($300 - $400 after all applicable fines), and pay the boot fee ($140).

And all this stemmed from a $10 fine for a headlamp which I'd already fixed!

I'm probably going to get all my shit out of the van, put it in storage a block away ($120 per month for a 9 foot by 6 foot closet) and figure out how I'm going to get to work from now until the end of the month, and figure out where I'm going to sleep since my van will be towed away Friday morning.

On top of all this, I've got two great career opportunities coming up within the next 48 hours, but both of them involve finishing my script, which means I need the time and the place to write, which I have neither.

Thank god I don't get stressed out, because if I did I'd be a fucking wreck right now...

New Nonfiction!: Not Really a Crisis, More of a Resolution

March 17, 2006

My toe - the bad one* that gets all bloody and pussy and infected, the one that makes me squirmish - has been getting really bad lately. I can't slip on my socks or shoes without wincing. I can't walk without a limp. I'm spending extraordinary amounts of money on bleach to keep my socks nice and white and clean, not pussy yellow and oozy brown. And I haven't done a whole lot of exercising since I moved to LA, in large part to me being lazy but in part to my foot hurting.

And then I get a call. It's a job in Anchorage where I'm going to be on my feet for 14 hours a day, and in the cold and wet snow, and the other night, while sitting at home watching a movie and drinking a beer, I'm picking at my toe and I rip out a portion of the ingrown toenail that's about the size of an M&M, and I'm amazed, because I know that's just the tip of the iceburg, so to speak.

So I figure I'll call a few podiatrists to see how much it's going to cost, and they all say the same thing - we won't know til we see it, and it'll cost roughly $75 to see it. I say, well, you know what? I'm moving back to Palm Springs temporarily, just long enough to save up my first months rent and my deposit for my share of a house I'm looking into with some friends of mine, so I don't have to worry about rent on the first, so $75 is cool.

I go to the office today, slip off my shoes and jump onto the doctor's chair thingy. The nurse comes in, looks at my toe, makes kind of a sickly face, and informs me the doctor will be in shortly.

She leaves.

The doctor comes in, makes friendly banter, and looks at my toe. I'm seeing the back of his head so I'm not sure what his reaction was, but it felt to me like stunned silence. He stares for too long a time to be good, then turns to me and says, "How longs it been like this, a couple weeks?" I laugh and tell him no, about a year and a half now. I was right - it was stunned silence. Now, somewhat self-conscious, I make a joke about being a procrastinator. He asks how I was referred to him. I say google. He says he's going to have a picture taken of my toe and post it on google under the headline "procrastination."

He tells me we should go about the fixing of my toe in two stage, and immediately I feel he's trying to screw me - two paychecks rather than one. The first step, he says, is to numb the toe, cut back the thick flap of skin that has slowly grown over about one-third of the nail, and then clip out the ingrown toe nail. Then, in a couple weeks, I'll come back and he'll cauterize the root of the portion that keeps growing wrong. I say this is cool, let's get to it.

He does this.

Long story shortish, when it's all done he shows me the size of the nail that he clipped out, that he been growing down into the skin, and its roughly the size of a nickel, and thick and gnarly looking. He says it's a record, easily.

He applies some crap to my toe and gives instructions on how to I should tend to it, and now I'm back at the office watching Candid Camera's Greatest Moments, and mentally preparing for my trip to Alaska.

(*: This is actually the better of the two. My right foot has been much worse for much longer)

New Nonfiction!: Desert Hot Springs - the Nexus of Suck (pt. 2)

November 1st, 2005

Update: My brother went to the house on Saturday after work and talked with the neighbor, who's an ex-cop and a would-be actor, and he tells Drew (my brother, Andrew), that he caught someone trying to shoulder their way through my front door. He says he got in his truck and chased the kid down, cornered him and held him until the cops came and arrested him. He also mentioned how his own house was burglarized a few months before - his badge and gun taken, along with computers and whatnots - and just earlier in the week, someone had made off with his trailer and a large generator.

So, since I hadn't heard this from the cops (I assumed they would've contacted me, especially after just filing a report), they said they'd get me in contact with the officer who filed the initial report. I wonder what that had anything to do with the kid shouldering his way into my house, but I went along with it. Then, after a couple days of not hearing anything, I called again, and they said if I couldn't come up with the exact date and time the would-be burgler was caught, then they couldn't do anything for me. I said I'm only hearing this information through hearsay, from my brother who learned if from a guy who's lived there only a couple months and who I've only spoken to once, for about 3 minutes (who, as of Nov. 2006 no longer lives there).

Furthermore, I told them how difficult is it to look up my address, since I'd been burgled once and near burgled again, only days later. Further furthermore, the neighbor told my brother that the kid who was arrested had outstanding warrants and I just want to find out if he's the guy who robbed me the first time and, if so, where the fuck are my things?

I was bounced back and forth between some phone numbers, spent a good hour and a half on the line and what's been concluded is that they can't do anything until I get my neighbor's name, address and the exact date and time of the crime, something I can't do until I go to that house again, which I guess will be this weekend but even then I'm not guaranteed to actually talk with me neighbor since he doesn't ever seem to be home on the weekends ever.

So basically, more to come from this stupid fucking legal system here in the sunshiny state of California.

New Nonfiction!: Desert Hot Springs - the Nexus of Suck.

October 21st, 2005

Hell House Update: Kathleen went to the house while I'm in LA to check my mail and see if it'd been re-burgled. It hasn't. However, it is flooded. The bathtub and toilet are overflowing, and the water is underneath all the floorboards in the hallway and my bedroom. The water, she says, is a brownish yellow color, and quite smelly. Her dad, a professional something or other, is coming down to check it out in the morning and will then call me with his opinion. I'll end up calling the water company and have them shut it off, mostlikely. So now the house, in which I still need to shoot portions of my movie, has been burglarized, robbed, struck by a tornado, shot up by a large caliber gun, and is now flooded.

On a funny* note, there was a helluva storm here last weekend and my brother and I, frustrated with the house and really, the whole city, said we hope that the rains continue and flood out everything, our own mini Katrina in the desert. The rains stopped, but the house flooded. Ironies rock!!

(*: Funny suck, not funny ha ha)

New Nonfiction!: The Van, My Friends, Is Dead.

September 5th, 2006

I hadn't planned on returning to LA from the Coachella Valley until really early Tuesday, before all the traffic makes the commute impossibly slow and, because of my lack of air conditioning, unbearably - if I leave at 3 am and roll down the window, the air feels just fine - but my buddy Nate called asking about poker, which was intriguing, and now RKDaley's in town(ish) so I thought maybe I'll head out early and see what happens.

What happened was traffic, shuffling us fools between 85 and zero, and when I'm only about 10 miles out of LA I spot smoke puffing from the ass of the van. I go on for a few miles more until I find an exit that looks like there'd be a gas station, but I drove around for a bit anyhow, searching. Stopped, I checked under the hood to find my oil cap mssing, so I write the smoke off as an issue regarding a lack of oil, or something. I'm no mechanic, and, having no way to immediately resolve that situation, I get back on the freeway and continue heading to Hollywood, maybe 6 miles or so away at this point, and I get to the Pepboys auto place that I hate for its awful service but love for its convenient location.

On the road, my van is having a hard time shifting gears. I'm supposed to be heading to my editor's house to take a look at the footage from our latest film, but I know now that my van's not going to make it. In Pepboys I buy an oil cap. I let the van rest a few minutes to see if maybe its just overheated, but still it has trouble shifting into reverse and first gear. I buy transmition fluid and somehow manage to work my van a couple blocks down and into this parking garage off Hollywood that I sometimes find myself sleeping in. It's a great place -- a block from my friend Brett's house (he's the writer/director of said film), and three blocks away from my favorite bar (the Power House, the last real dive bar in LA). Three blocks in the other direction is this awesome coffeeshop I'm sitting at right now, with free wireless internet and hours until 3am. There's a drunk bus, the subway, great eateries and drunken whores within stumbling distance.

With a fantastic view of Hollywood and LA as the backdrop, I pop the hood and pour in some tranny fluid. I start the engine. More smoke billows out the back. The poker game is in an hour. I paid $8 for parking. I put the car into gear but its just not going to happen. I call Nate and he graciously picks me up. I lose the first game but win the second. Afterward, I go to the Baked Potato and meet up with Brett and his friends to see some bands. Many of the were excellent, but the Bud Lights were $5 and the bartender was a bitch. Also, there was nowhere to sit.

Brett and I walk back to Hollywood, from the valley, 4 or so miles up hill at 2 in the morning, drunk. My toes hurt but I feel good regardless. He goes home, and I crawl into my van and try to check my email. Sometimes I get lucky and tap into some kid's wireless, but not tonight. I consider a hotel room with the money I won earlier, but remind myself that I need to make sure I've got enough money to at least pretend to resolve this issue somehow, so I go to bed, instead.

10:00 am. It's hot already. I'm slightly hungover and my feet are killing me. I didn't have an opportunity to brush my teeth the night before so I've got that funky feeling in my mouth. I check the van to see if it works. It starts, it doesn't turn into a fiery ball of my demise when I turn the key, so that's a good sign. But it won't go into reverse. It won't even try. Beneath the van there's fluids everywhere, as though it had a wet dream, or, like one of those dogs that someone beats up and abandons so when it approaches you pitifully for a handout, when you reach down to pet it, it wets itself. That's my van, wetting itself all over the nice concrete of this nice parking garage, under a nice smog gray sky. I've got to piss like no one's business.

I grab my backpack and hoof it over to the coffee joint. I brush my teeth, wipe my ass (sweat, not poop), and I grab an iced coffee, which is something I've never really liked until recently. Coffee flavor is gross, but I'm turning that corner. My tastes are maturing, I suppose. I think I'm going to grow my first pubic hair soon. Dear god, please. Make it soon.

Today, I'm going to finish this thread and figure out how to get to Encino to pick up my paychecks and sort through my options. Then, I'm going to go see a movie(*).

1: Try to get my van out of the parking garage and over to Pepboys a mile down one of the busiest roads in the country, or I can leave it and look into purchasing a month long parking pass and use this as my base of operations while I figure out how to get to work and back, which is difficult because we typically work a week in one area and move to somewhere else entirely.

2: See how long they go without noticing my van sitting here, pissing on the rooftop with some crazy, smelling dirty guy sleeping inside.

Or 3: Call it quits, phone my friend Matt who just moved back to Palm Springs recently, and have him pick me up with my stuff in his truck and head back to Desert Hot Springs where I will be in the heat without a vehicle, in a house with sporatic plumbing - which is pretty much exactly the situation I'm in here, except my house is a little roomier than my van but I don't have wireless internet or a possible job.

New Nonfiction!: Never Take Shit For Granted

April 19th, 2006

I've learned a couple things this week. One is it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to get sick. In fact, it took me no effort at all because I did it in my sleep. I'm not sure how many people die each year from spider bites - not many, probably - but because of the near-sadistic treatment I received from the medical staff at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, if I'd been, say, younger or 100 pounds lighter, I might've died. (Although, because it was Easter, I would've come back to life 3 days later. I think that's the way it works.)

I woke up Sunday morning to a pinching sensation in my abdomen. I thought maybe I'd rolled over onto a thorn or something. After a moment, there was a pain, almost like a metal rod slowly being pushed into my gut, toward my groin. I got up, walked around, checked my email, tried to figure out if this was my imagination or if I was really in pain. My lower back was starting to ache, and my chest was tightening. Breathing was difficult. I assumed it was a black widow, because I've been seeing more and more of them around the house lately, and they've looked hungry.

I've lived in this house on and off for nearly seven years, and yet I had to google the nearest hospital, because I've never been injured badly enough or sick enough to need to go. I don't think I've been to a hospital since I broke my wrist at a track meet my Junior year of high school.

Skipping ahead, I go to the hospital and because I'm unemployed and without health insurance, I'm treated like a junkie looking for a couple pills. The doctor tells me, before even looking at the bite, that he could tell from across the room that I wasn't bit by a black widow. He checks my vital signs, and even though I'm obviously in pain he says I'm fine. I tell him I'm having a hard time breathing. He tells me I'm breathing perfectly. I'm dismissed within two minutes, after waiting in the lobby of the emergency room for over an hour, where the only other injured persons was an 80 year old woman in a wheel chair with her son and a born again Christian who was actively recruiting. The entire time the pain is getting worse.

The doctor (who turned out to be only a physician's assistant, not even a goddamn physician), tells me that I'm probably suffering from anxiety or a panic attack. He tells me if I want, I can go home, or I can wait in the lobby to see if any other symptoms arise. I ask if I can lay down somewhere, and he says I can lay down in the lobby.

Skipping way ahead (I'm saving all the rest of the stuff for the lawyers), I did get a prescription for vicodin and valiume, and I spent the last couple days stashed away in my dirty, congested house, alternatingly sweating and shivering, full-body muscle spasming, with aches and pains in all my muscles and joints, trying to gulp down chicken broth and hold my hand steady enough to sip a glass of water. I slept a lot, but never for more than a couple hours at a time, and I never felt fully rested. The vicodin I was given would knock me out for two or three hours at a time, tops.

The vicodin also made me constipated.

I assume it was the pills, because that's listed as one of the side-effects. No where does WebMD list constipation as a side-effect of a black widow bite. So I stopped taking the pills after the end of the 1st day. I was still in an enormous amout of pain, but it was slowly making it's way towards my extremities, rather than being spread over all of me all at once. My wrist, the bad one that's broken, hurts a lot, but it's secondary to the throbbing in my ankles and feet. I felt like I know what pregnant women go through. But even with the pain, the thought of all this shit gathering inside my gut was enough to lay down the meds. I envisioned Elvis, an artist, a legend, dead on the toilet, 40 pounds of turd in his belly.

I've been drinking lots of water. I didn't have an appetite for the first couple days, but I tried to make myself eat. At the very least, I figured my liquid diet would produce some nasty diarrhea. No such luck. It took me well into Monday afternoon before I let out a single fart, and it was nothing more than expelled air--no discernable smell whatsoever. Normally, this wouldn't be considered a bad thing, but because it's so out of the norm, I thought it might be another side-effect.

Several unsuccessful attempts on the toilet left me shaken--literally and figuratively. I can't sit or stand or lay down in any position for more than a couple minutes before the muscle spasms start up again. And the knowledge that I had to shit but was unable to really was affecting my mental well-being. I was getting depressed.

Also, urinating is very hard when you're body is rockin' like San Fran in 19 aught 6. What is normally a simple thirty-second, second-nature activity would now take two to three minutes of extreme effort and concentration. And then, afterwards, was cleanup. At least Michael J. Fox has assistants.

My brother gave up his bed (which used to be my bed, but he moved back into the house first, so I've got the couch), so I've been off the couch for a couple days. Each day my health is getting a little better. I've got my very own Nurse Cratchet--big shout out to Kathleen--she brought over the chicken broth, even after I told her I wasn't the least bit hungry. Then, after seeing what all this has been doing to my toes (another blog altogether), she demanded we go to the grocery store and get some proper medication.

She made me buy prunes, but they didn't have dried prunes so I had to get jarred, with the pits still in them, and they're absolutely disgusting--they taste fine enough, not as bad as I assumed they'd be, but I absolutely hate gooey and mushy foods, and it was tough to keep them down after I swallowed.

She forced me to eat solid food again, and also brought over a thermometer even though I promised her I was feeling better. She checked my temperature anyhow. It was 101. That was last night, more than two full days since the bite.

So anyway, I'm pleased to announce that gradually there's been more of the normal aroma in my flatulance, and I'm pleased to announce that this morning, more than three whole days after my last bowel movement, I left a little somethin something in the bowl. So it's progress.

Also, I learned that spider bites don't get you super powers.

Today, the hurricane-force winds that have been battering my house for the last couple days were gone, and in their place was a gentle breeze. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky. It was sunny and warm. I did laundry and hung it out on the clothesline, and I made myself a tuna fish sandwich and it was delicious. I spent more than 10 minutes on the internet (not necessarily a good thing, but definitely a return to normalcy). When my brother went to school today, I rode into town with him and laid out on campus and got some sun while watching the cute Japanese girls giggling on the front steps of the Student Council building.

And I came home and took a nice, big dump.

Today was a beautiful day.