I grew up in Camden (405 Kaign Avenue), my grandmother’s house and Philadelphia (3228 N. 15th Street) and I, too, love the Jersey shore.

As an older person, having witnessed over time many natural events, I am constantly amazed at development that seems to ignore or forget these things, building in flood plains and along the shorelines, where in my own memory weather, earthquakes and other events of predictable magnitude have demonstrated the risks.

Recently, I read in a compendium of articles written by Malcolm Gladwell for the New Yorker magazine about a principle called, Homeostasis of Risk. It appears that we learn to live with a degree of risk such that, for instance, when ABS brakes were deployed, the result was that people drove faster and the frequency of road accidents and fatalities remained constant, and in fact, only when perceived risk was higher do frequencies of “accidents” decrease. This definitely applies to development. The population increases, engineering technology for infrastructure advances and following a bell curve more or less, people take greater risks–regarding the probabilities of storm effects, etc. No way in hell do we have the infrastructure in Southern California, where I live, that could support critical needs of the border population in the event of a major storm, flood, earthquake or epidemic.

While my hands, heart and assets are available to assist those in need, I find it strange when actors pretending to be journalists expect us to take the media circus known as a presidential election seriously while the government spends billions on military efforts that are historically losers and a space program attempting to find signs of intelligent life elsewhere while unable to unambiguously define intelligent life, while in the meantime, pretending that accommodating economic growth in itself will deal with a burgeoning human population at risk of predictable natural and manmade disasters that must eventually be economically unsupportable. We see these things like Katrina, Sandy and Fukushima happening with increasing numbers and never establish economic reserves to deal with them while allowing those who profit from financing risk prone development based on risk analysis that places a dollar value on our lives. Dollar value of your life. Can you actually hear that? Dollar value of your life.

In a recent Scientific American, an engineer, who had predicted Sandy and all of its effects, described in terms of things people and communities are now suffering, concluded with the advice that the problem is that development in America is overseen locally by “home rule”, in which local politics and thus local developers determine how land is used. In California, this approach to land use planning is codified in the General Plan Law, which is typical of all states and is the only way development can occur. State and federal regulation attempts to set standards, however, when the taxpayer picks up the cost of disasters, local developers and the financial institutions that funded them are insured against the damages resulting from their ventures.

After I wrote about this in a book called, Architectronics, I attempted to see what could be done locally and I became a developer and learned that the problem is not solvable at the federal or state level since ALL politics is local and thus, there is no alternative to home rule. Regulations serve the purpose of setting the terms for taxpayer funded bailouts but do not prevent stupid development. At the moment, this kind of development is rampant in North Dakota, associated with fracking around the headwaters of primary water systems for the continent. Parts of Europe and Scandinavia present a better model for development where populations have learned that the only way to deal with the combination of homeostasis of risk and greed is to arbitrarily limit new opportunity since the title to open land is in the crown rather than a democratic state. Unfortunately, energy development is not so controlled and the amount of nuclear waste collecting around Europe surpasses all expectations and discussing this threatens the economy. China’s brown cloud is also now obscuring the European sun, the sea is rising to swamp the Netherlands and Venice and the issue of energy sources presents catastrophic risk.

Given that you will probably see more nuclear power plants developed in high risk areas and we are ignoring the issue of nuclear waste products and given Fukushima, Sandy and Katrina are the tip of the iceberg.

It is noble when unrelated people help each other when there are meltdowns but to continue to allow our governments and media to ignore the problem is to guaranty that future disasters will have greater impact–they simply must, as development driven by economic ambition puts even more people at greater risk.

Yes! Of course! Any person your age, who doesn’t pity and despise the human species just hasn’t been paying attention. Alternatively, I suppose they could be dimwitted or have dementia?

I wonder what it’s like when the Pope is suffering dementia? Reagan had Nancy at least. George W. was dumb as a stack of nines to begin with and Cheney did all his brain work anyway. Clinton liked to think with his dick. We lack good role models these days.

11:AM, merged my yellow convertible Tracker onto 405 South at Long Beach, gliding between southbound vehicles at 70-75mph through 4 lanes to center lane 100 yards behind a gold Toyota, adjusting the brim of a leather cowboy hat shading my eyes from hot, glaring, summer sun, check the rearview for CHP. Sounds of traffic and wind noise roar with occasional subsonic gusts, penetrated by low bass and treble sounds, when passing trucks.

Without audible change, a flash of fire engine red, inset, a hot yellow-orange flame sweeps from behind me into peripheral vision, sliding into the lane in front of me, while my circuits cycle about the sex of the driver. Shoulder length curls twisting in the breeze.

Undifferentiated tumbling sounds of wind and tires make me feel like the visual scene’s in slow motion as we hurtle down the highway at 80mph. Narcissistic man or sexy assertive female blowing me off in the convertible red Mustang GT500? Easing the accelerator down to 85, drifting through a gap to a lane opening up two ticks later downstream and, as if soundless, floating by, I see the woman, maybe 40, hotter than the Cobra she drives as cool as Kurt Busch at Richmond.

Having negotiated these freeways since forever, even with 25% of the power of her Cobra, my ’92 Geo passes, leaving her just behind every time she tries to take the lead—or is she flirting? Into Lake Forest, she puts her foot down, seconds later, she’s a mile ahead. I decide to let her know whose really boss, let Tracker have 85, then 90, taking advantage of every opportunity. Reaching the turn at Dana Point, her lead is ¼ mile, into San Clemente, 200 yards. Suddenly, a silent explosion of brown dust kicks up at the road side, just past Christianos. A patrol car fish-tails into traffic wildly as the CHP dives into traffic like an Osprey after it’s prey. The quarry wouldn’t be mine, not today.

There had to be a moment in the life of Howard Jarvis, when he said, probably first to himself, then to his family and friends, “I’m fed up [with the predatory actions of the public sector] and so began Prop 13, which put an end to endless property tax increases. No doubt such a moment occurred again when Gray Davis put forward a plan (no doubt a bright idea from the department of transportation), to triple automobile registration fees, leading to an I’m-Fed-Up inspired recall and election of the Terminator.

Not only do I’m-Fed-Up measures meet public acceptance at the ballot box, but also, they have a nudging effect on the population, inspiring them with hope by giving them an illusion of power stirred up by raging against the machine, raised fist salutes etc. However, when the result is money taken from the grasp of the bureaucracy, initiatives can do long term good.

On the ballot in San Diego now is another I’m-Fed-Up initiative, directed at the way public employee’s unions, public safety officers associations and the League of Cities (a name mis-used by the association of city management employees and elected officials—the lobby a Brown Act violation by definition) “encouraged” elected officials (who depend on public employees both for their endorsements in elections and to not screw things up and make them look bad), to hypothecate the general fund forever, to pay for extraordinary retirement benefits, while their constituents see no social security payment increases and the city ignores repairs to infrastructure. (This too shall pass.)

The root of the problem is that public sector employees hold trump cards in their ability to influence policy at a very low as well as higher levels of government, which shows up in every problem that ends up as an I’m-Fed-Up issue. This underlying issue could be addressed in a ballot measure to prevent endorsements by their associations but it would be difficult to police the internecine relationships between office holders and paid staff. The very need for this illustrates the moral/ethical conflicts. However, the voting public might at least obtain a seat at the negotiation table with other initiative ballot measures that could direct a laser beam on public sector parasitism: Ban the parking meters.

Ban them because the idea of municipalities renting space on public streets, a practice covered under the rubric, “parking meters” is a double tax since the public already pays for construction and maintenance of streets and highways. Charging to use them for the intended purposes: driving and parking ignores the fact that this wasn’t understood at the outset when the funds were approved for their development. Yet, while people would be outraged if they asked to pay for using freeways, they are not consulted about parking meters. The idea is someone other than you is paying but that is really nonsense since there isn’t an infinite total amount of money available to the economy. Take this money out of the reach of public predation by banning the practice. Let people spend their money on other things. Not only are meters double taxation, but also, they harm small businesses that can’t afford to provide parking lots as can chains and big box stores. Metered parking is not about parking limitation, it is a strategy for collecting money. (I wonder if Mr. DeMaio, who boasts of his support of the pension regulating measure, would dare stand up for voters against this far more predatory form of public larceny.)

Charges for parking violations could also be addressed by initiative as should the whole money making machine that traffic “infractions” has become, a poignant issue in view of global warming and fodder for yet another I’m-Fed-Up measure. There’s a reason when a metropolitan area the size of San Diego/Tijuana (total population now exceeding 6? million) between Rosarito and Camp Pendleton can’t muster the political will to organize a mobility system that frees those who wish it from their need for automobiles. (Putting aside the sociological and economic effects of severely constraining mobility in a large, spread out area.) The reason there has been no political will for a network of reliable, convenient public transit is not the influence of car dealers, oil companies, repair garages and insurance companies that benefit from automotive traffic, but much more important, the greater and more direct political influence of public sector employees—the traffic cops, courts, the private collection agency that partners with the courts with the sinister name, “Alliance”, red-light camera and parking meter companies and all the municipal employees who in various ways have their faces in this trough. Endorsement of candidates by peace officer’s associations, firemen and the like carries disproportionate weight with media and press and a gullible public is unwilling to admit that cops are just neighbors licensed to carry guns and are far from being saints. That’s another issue.

The world is now divided into two camps: those who have no jobs and can afford very little, who travel rarely, if ever, and are seldom seen on airliners or cruise ships or in taxi cabs, legitimate theaters and four star restaurants, have recently lost their homes or have never owned one, buy everything they need at Walmart, Food For Less and garage sales, and those who are receiving money each month from gainful employment, annuities or trust funds inheritance, who populate crowds at airline terminals, hotels and concerts, who shop at department stores, buy iPads, iPhones, hybrid cars and private vintage wines, pay mortgages or live in moderately priced apartments in the better neighborhoods, dine with fashionably-coifed friends on patios outside trendy restaurants and complain about toxicity of genetically modified food, cell phone radiation and municipal water supplies.

I lost it at Lindbergh field last night. The irony of that name reflects everything about the denouement of San Diego from a desirable place to live to Las Vegas by the sea. Every opportunity of graceful living in San Diego has been usurped for exploitation by tourism and in the process, transformed into something unlovely and false yet pricey. Meanwhile, middle class consumers in the thronging crowd attending departures and arrivals at the international airport mill around, like nervous cattle in chutes leading to the slaughter house, uttering an occasional moan of complaint but don’t really get it. Unlike their counterparts in rural places, those who live in places like southern California are oblivious to material conditions in which they live, nor that they would be far better off back in Tennessee, Milwaukee, Lincoln or the places in Viet Nam, the Philippines, Korea or Guatemala that they or their parents or grandparents left to come to the land of opportunity. Finally, as that opportunity is revealed as illusory, a trick to lure them into coming here to add to the volume of consumers, in places in the middle east, people are realizing that it is a better plan to overthrow regimes that suppress opportunity there rather than trying to find it elsewhere. Meanwhile, unawakened multitudes stand in queues to be hustled by other wage-earners into aluminum tubes, like cattle.

We gobble the idea of six degrees of separation like private label scotch whisky and ignore the malt upon which the theory rests, in this case that everything (every little thing) is in some way, intimately related.

Someone writes or tell us, “context is everything” and we nod like stoned sophomores but, when some idiot sprays bullets in packed movie theater, the focus of attention is all about the idiot’s face or his hair, how he dresses, his choice of weapon, affiliations, mental state, etc., and we ignore the context in which his act makes horrifying sense.

In this way, we assure it will happen again in a different place with a different murderer because the act was the product of the context and the individual that acts it out is merely coincidental.

It’s a far cry, as my mother and her mother before her would say, from a campsite in a forest on the northwestern edge of the new world to an overlook at the edge of the upper lake behind Padre Dam, an oasis in an otherwise arid locale known as Santee, the result of the refusal by citizens of the county of San Diego to drink the processed product of their liquid waste. With prideful words, if not heart, Mr. Skinner, the current director of Santee Lakes Recreational Campground, a private enterprise owned by the Padre Dam Municipal Wastewater Treatment facility, waxes eloquent about the potential clarity of water in the five manmade lakes, were it not, he tells me, for the presence of a lot of algae, a result of not quite sufficient aeration and the accumulation of chemicals that are not required to be removed in the treatment process for non-potable water.

Were it not for the presence of a thin belt of stucco, ranch style homes that the developers of the sewage treatment company were permitted to build on the periphery around the five small lakes, if you ignore the source of the water and the unnatural rectangular shape of the lakes, the panorama of brown hills, studded with scrub oak, habitat for snakes and rodents, substantial numbers of noisy coyotes, occasionally visible mountain lions, hawks and ravens, will fool you into thinking you are somewhere far distant from the thronging multitudes and traffic of the San Diego/Tijuana megalopolis. Were it not for cries of egrets and blue heron, you might think you’re in a terraformed habitat on Mars or Phoenix, Arizona.

My one true love, V, who is to me like Brooke Magnanti’s “Boy” though circumstances prevented our going beyond the first kiss (in a just and fair world, imbued with the spirit of a compassionate God, we would have), and after trials and tribulations (jealously thought to be exotic), found her way through the occult and pharmacological to Jesus and, while under the influence of divine passion, was eventually led to marry a fellow Jesus devotee, with whom she propagated offspring, none of whom appear to reflect her singular piquant charm, perhaps because their dna was dilluted by more gross dominant paternal genes.  The spell that was cast on me by her voice, eyes, touch of her skin, hair, etc., must have surprised nature as much as it did me—aberrant strands of dna straying from the path, producing a rare beauty, the kind that wounds the archer, as with the youngest daughter of the Sicilian king, Psyche, whose jealous mother, Aphrodite, separated from her love.

In V, an incarnation of Psyche’s mythic grace, the soul again divided from animal lust, the marriage of which results in bliss, has her now wed to a sufficient idea—leaving her true lover to peripatetic dispersion of his seed with little purpose. Nature is a pack rat, nothing is discarded, leastwise, recessive genes and in another time her great great great grand child and one of mine will find each other, unite and foster a universe of bliss.

Now, however, V has become a highly successful writer of spiritual guidance books on the covers of which are promotional phrases like, “AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD” and “A SOLID FOUNDATION IN GOD’S TRUTH” and “A COMMITMENT TO OBEDIENCE”, while I, her match made in heaven, follow the mandate of my design by writing plays with titles like, “Fast Cars and Slow Orgasms – Cementing a Relationship”.

Having sex with any and every willing object I could hasn’t lead me to feel V’s blush in that one kiss we shared. Though sex is delicious and I’ve grown attached to and possessive about cohorts even though lacking that charged quality I felt with V and after awhile, I came to believe I’d imagined it for if it was real, then I must blame my naive fear and hesitation, not as did V, her disturbed, frightened mother, that prevented me from taking her when I should have, regardless of consequences, at all costs, when I had the chance to play the masculine role libidinous women can’t resist, who want to be taken, held, caressed, ridden, used and put away wet.

A romantic, only at those times, when I became sufficiently pent up and in the coincidental presence of a similarly tensed female, an übermensch arose in me like the reverse metamorphosis of a butterfly becoming lustful blind worm, the result of which held sufficient promise for a woman, leading to relationships, which should have stayed one-nighters but didn’t because of confused romantic ethics when conscientious copulators try to make the lies they told each other, true, or some more pragmatic purpose. Over time, I came to believe I’d imagined the spark of V’s touch or that it was the coincidence of something chemical, impersonal, even childish and unimportant.

When I learned a few years ago about her love affair with Jesus, I felt I had another good reason to lament a religious tradition, which for 2000 years has been the source rapacious ideologies ranging from the genocide of the native population of this hemisphere led by Catholic friars to the horrors of kristalinacht and Auschwitz. I knew about V’s past but very little about how it had affected her after we parted and in my heart I cry that she suffered so long and that, wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I had been so absorbed in my own needs that I didn’t even think to act on her behalf.

But having learned, finally, one day, by accident, that she had found some kind of peace, I saw her books on the shelf a book store in a town on the Oregon Coast and I refused to read one or to take her seriously. Until one day last February, I was telling a girl friend, J, who is also my lawyer and likes to advise me, about what had happened with V and the mystery of that kiss and J said to, “you have no idea about V’s relationship with Jesus…not a clue, not the first idea!”  Not one to shirk such a challenge, I borrowed one of V’s books from the public library, coincidentally, along with research I was doing for a play about contemporary sexual predicaments, thus unwittingly tweaking the mentality of the play with an unlikely combination of libertine, spiritual and sentimental points of view. My experience with V has taught me that De Sade was right–Jesus would have to agree.

Fuck the DEA and other brands of American imbecility, I can’t stay in a bad mood in PB. Firstly, because it’s hard to keep my mind on it and watch where I’m walking so I’m prone to fall on my face in front of a half naked coed “innocently” sashaying down Cass Street, sucking on a smoothie. Secondly, because, although they can’t be going anyplace for which there could be reason to rush, like drivers in TJ (where by definition rapid response is an oxymoron), they turn their cars in front of you with nonchalance, as if an unconscious self-assertion pitted against the undifferentiated human background of  conformity of which they are a dedicated part, which amuses me no end.

Turning left from Ingraham onto Riviera this afternoon, I saw looming large in the rear view mirror, behind a shiny tinted glass windshield, a middle-aged idiot driving one of those enormous chromed-out Dodge Ram Turbo Diesel Supreme Macho pickup trucks. Reminded me of the caption printed on the frame enclosing the license plate of D’s gold Corolla, “If you’re gonna ride my ass, at least, pull my hair!”. As I made the turn, I saw a silver Prius wanted to reverse out of a driveway and, to spite the tailgating clown driving the Dodge, rather than out of some nobler inspiration, I braked to allow the Prius to enter, stopping traffic and hoping the shmuck in the truck would pay for my next car. His response was to veer the Ram to try to pass me on the right. Give the guy one for reaction time and perseverance but by then the Prius blocked his maneuver—the dude lost the round. I’m sure he’ll be back on the line next time the whistle blows.

Walked up the stairs past the “wait to be seated” sign and into 976 feeling over-confident if not upbeat. Four coeds surrounded my usual table, kibitzing in deutsch sprache over their laptops. Put my stuff down on the corner table beside them and said, “hello” accompanied by an ordinary southern Cal off-handed smile, which the girls ignored with typically distant teutonic snobbery…I imagined these assholes blowing kisses to their SS husbands and brothers going off to murder Jews and faggots back in the day. Welcome to the USA, babezillas, careful not to open your minds, something real might fall in.

With no definite plan in mind, I sauntered up to the counter to order a “beverage”–table rent. A recording of the Temptations’ My Girl, drifted toward me like Cupid’s golden dart and as I struggled to return from a visit to the past, B’s brown hair tumbling over ivory shoulders and breasts, taught nipples in classic form, I heard the young man behind the counter saying, “Hi, how are you?” With a glance, taking in his enviably slim young body in navy blue “976” T shirt and de rigreur Levi pants, I felt an unspecified pang of envy for the opportunity of his self-assured and my own lost youth and balanced my self esteem as I engineered a response he could appreciate,

“I’m ok,” I said, “high, at least. How ’bout you?” He grinned a 420 grin full of straight white teeth, smiles and sparkly eyes.”

“Great,” he said , “what would you like?”

“I really don’t know…something non-lethal.., definitely something non-caffeinated—something cold and smooth…”

“I can do smooth!”

“You say that to all the guys.” Toying with intimacy like macho guys who don’t go there but aren’t phobic about it.

“Yeah,” he said, “I do, in fact.” Being cool.

We laughed together at the homeo-erotic reference, perhaps, telepathing a shared vision of activities in a prison dorm. He said, “I can make you a smoothie.”

“What kind of smoothies can you make?”

“What are you into?” (Taunting? Cheeky fucker.)

“Women…obsessively, actually. Really.” We laughed some more. “So what do you suggest—about the smoothie, I mean.”

“Well,” he said, “I like mango, strawberry, raspberry.”

“In the direction of pink, that’s good.”

“Yes,” self-satisfied grin about his cuisinal pun.

“Ok, let’s do that. I’ll use my imagination. We can call it Eskimo Pie—no, that’s already taken. How about Mango Raspberry Chick? More direct, Cool, Sweet Pussy.”

I took out my credit card.

“No,” he said, this one’s free.”

“No shit?”

“I like you,” he said, “you’re cool.”

“Thank you. I like me, to,” I said.

After Bear died, I woke up depressed most mornings; for awhile, I went around dazed like a stoner in between hits; bong-hits being his only focused moments. But I wasn’t high, I was so low that outwardly, it looked like high till I opened my mouth and uttered something from the negative pole of my attitudinal structure.

When I got over losing Bear, I’d wake up full of bitches and complaints about whatever, and often, out of a dream related to it. As time went by, I began to keep a journal of stuff my mood exposed to the harsh, clear light of my “I-really-don’t-give-a-fat-rats-ass-about-it-but-let’s-not-bullshit-each-other” view of life, I had no problem seeing the honest-to-god-sheer-beauty of things like lying face up in the grass on top of the ridge above Pt. Sal but I could not shake the notion of nearby human infestation in Lompoc and one day in Bandor, Oregon, I nearly puked when a guy I met there told me about his relationship with Jesus.

This morning, I drove the Tracker 200 yards northeast to the park’s public pool for my morning hydrotherapy and get-in-shape-or-die-mother-fucker laps because I don’t like walking home tired and hungry after swimming. When I got there the place was empty and for the first 12 laps, I had the place to myself. Undisturbed through the night, the pool was cool and clear as the air in the rural southwestern desert east of San Diego. As I stroked and pulled back and forth across the surface, I imagine more like a fat tan rat than a water bug, along with the burble, gargle-blurp created by my attempts at graceful form, I also listened to the morning’s complement of my bitching and complaining thoughts. Weightless buoyancy and repetitious gurgle-blurgle-gurgle-splash began to calm the fires of discontent that fueled my inner conversation and a kind of stillness began such that, when turning my head to breathe, my brain double-took the recognition of bright blueness of the cloudless sky and a passing hawk.

However, as lap 13 began, I heard the clang of the iron gate slamming and saw moving, as if on wheels, a round, sunburned pink white man in a bright yellow bathing suit with a straw hat on his probably bald head, carrying towels and such, trailed by two small boys who I anticipated would now intervene in my finally at last even, measured strokes and  meditation evaporated, replaced by another series of thoughts, ranging from spit-roast toddlers to phrasing the next carefully worded letter to management, suggesting swimming lanes and hours separating the beneficial enterprise of aquatic exercise versus the senseless child free-swim activities, not to mention the endless stream of children and their out-0f-shape fathers and mothers un-showered before entering the pools, the adults preferring to use the hot tub for that purpose, making it a soupy pot of chlorinated dead bacteria and microscopic particles of dead skin cells and other bodily detritus.

At the eastern end of lap 15, a pink urchin the size of a juvenile emperor penguin wearing a brown bathing suit crossed my bow forcing me to stop and I admit to momentarily contemplating the pleasure of drowning the little bastard on the spot, while his white trash parents farted in the hot tub oblivious to their mindless progeny’s inconsiderate activities in what had previously been my swimming pool.

“Look,” I said to him, catching my breath, “I’m going to swim back and forth along this side of the pool,” I indicated with my arms a lane about a meter wide, “ and you have the entire rest of the pool, ok?” As if not hearing me, he said, “I can swim, too, wanna see me?” “Ok,” I said, hoping to see his flailing body sinking to the bottom, “show me.” Taking a deep breath, he pursed his lips and threw his little body forward face down and for about three yards, did something like a desperate Australian crawl performed by a drunk cat. Stopping when he needed air, he stood up and shouted, “see! I can swim, too.” “Very good,” I said, “except for the breathing part.” “No,” he said, “I breathed. I do it under water.” “How does that work?” “Like this,” he dove head first to the bottom of the pool and surfacing, he exhaled, “see?” “I don’t get it,” I said. “Are you breathing water?” He looked at me like I am strange or blind and said, “you can go back to swimming now” and he swims away. Just like that, he tells me I can go back to swimming now.

As I pushed off lap 16, it struck, “you can go back to swimming now” in the authentic authoritative voice of an unaffected child, defining the difference between swimming versus bitching and complaining while pushing water around. The last 16 laps went by too quickly it seemed, I could have stayed and played in the pool all day.

Midnight at the oasis, deep in a dream of D, lowering her supple body onto mine, excitement mounts as roaring approval erupts from the crowd of spectators, like an approaching fleet of jetliners, fire engines–fire engines? WTF? Awakening from imminent ecstacy just out of reach, flickering red light illuminates the ceiling. Segue into another chapter of the dream? But no. Fucking consciousness has, dammit, once again, awakened me from paradise. Now, what the hell’s going on out there?

Lifting my face from the downy softness of D’s pubes, transformed by Quixotian demons into a cotton-covered pillow, I see through the window that a huge space ship, studded with blinking red, yellow and blazing white lights has landed on the other side of the creek, a hundred yards away. Slipping bathing trunks over the fading ardor of my moist dream of D, I slither down three steps below my door into the black shadow cast by the RV. The park lights are off, the only light comes across the creek, where in the sky, a brilliant white glow flickers amidst a tumult of smoke, perforated by gold sparks.

Walking around the back of D’s 5th wheel to the creek, I find my neighbors standing in little clusters, watching the light show. Drift around the scene hoping to see D but no dice. Too bad, I’m so fucking horny. Not in the cards. Why? What has God in store for me? Why not this, oh Lord? Yes, I have sinned but I have also seen the light!

Two guys wearing fireproof suits stand on the roof swing axes through the roof of the restroom building, sending up showers of sparks as clouds of smoke pour around them reflecting beams of light from two fire trucks. The figures of the men are magnified by their reflection on the boiling smoke above them, a scene out of Dante’s Inferno.

“Where’s the keg?” I ask one of my neighbors.

“What?”

“How can you have a fire and not bring a keg? Is this California?”

“We got marshmellows.”

Dammit, Don must have torched that bathroom. He hates cleaning that restroom. Just yesterday, he said to me,  “women here throw their fucking tampons on the floor. There’s a sign, there’s receptacles and they throw them on the floor.” I told him it’s a biological imperative. They’re marking. Don’t even know they do it. You have to respect a force of animal nature.” “Fuck that,” he said, “I don’t need that shit.” Hmmm.

Now I have to go all the way to the clubhouse to shower and D is nowhere in sight. No doubt the little bitch is getting her nympho lobes fucked to oblivion by an Abyssinian. Oh, Lord, why not me, Your humble servant? What is Your great plan for my life? Hast Thou forsaken me? Again? At least, can I die and come back as an Abyssinian?

Did my 24 laps of NSA satisfaction this morning, followed by solar irradiation, watching  urchins splash around, while their respective Rubensian MILFS put up their hair and slid into the hot tub—their cushioned butts puffing out around flower print bikinis. Nothing quite like a swimming pool in an RV park. There’s a sequence:  toddlers arrive, bobbing around moms, then the tweens, followed by teen queens, a hierarchy of sexual maturity or experience. The MILFIES flaunting and flirting like chrome, double-spooned fishing lures. Erections are uncool in this setting, their hubbies hang out, pretending interest; store memories for later possibilities. Walking home, I came upon the blond nymph, who stays, sometimes, in the big 5^th wheel opposite my RV, usually I see her when she comes out to smoke a cigarette, standing there, dressed in a pink, cotton mini-dress.

“Hi, D, nice to see you…” (subtext: I’d like to fuck you blind)

Big smile. “Hi, thanks, nice to see you, too.” (I’m ready when you are.)

“I really missed you around here the last few days. Nice to see you back.” (Damn, gotta be soon…)

“Did you really?” (I’m looking forward to it.)

“God yes! I’ve had to go online to find the inspiration for my fantasies.” (I’ve been jerking off thinking about you.)

Laughs. (I like the image.)

“Never as satisfying, you know…” (Throw away line in lieu of proposition.)

“No, I didn’t…” (You gotta ask me for what you want, dude.)

An online survey of livecam male clients asked 150 men in the U.S. that use MyFreeCams.com (MFC) to choose between sending a $2 donation to a presidential campaign; to donate $3 to help starving children in Africa or to tip an MFC webcam model $5.

75 men said they’d tip the model $5 or more; 10 men helped the starving kids, 50 men said they didn’t have that kind of money, 18 guys said they didn’t know what a Romney or Obama is.

No one gave money to a political campaign.

They were asked to explain their decisions. If you want to see a copy of the reasons they gave: michael@michaelwinn.org (I will post a summary of the data.)

In 2008, while walking around with my dog on the Mendocino coast, I came upon a school of fine woodworking, an annex of College of the Redwoods, a community college in Fort Bragg. The school originated as a private workshop founded by James Krenov, a Danish immigrant master craftsman, who died during the year I was in Fort Bragg. Every Friday evening, the students and teachers drank beer around a bonfire in which they burned the week’s collection of mistakes, mockups and trims and occasionally, I’d be walking by and drink a beer with them. Students come to this school from many places in the world to master the crafts of shaping and joining fine, wooden furniture. All of their work must meet the highest standards of perfect manufacture and fine finish. To the students and their teachers, I was just an interesting local guy out walking his dog, taking pictures of everything. Looking at my pictures, I saw that the “mistakes” they were burning were often beautifully figured wood from exotic and domestic species. One Friday, I came by earlier in the day to salvage some wood from their scrap bin to make a guitar stand. Everything I’d seen for the purpose seemed uninspired. Within a month, I’d made four exquisite pieces from castaways that I’d saved from the fire: two guitar stands, a footrest and a small piece of display art, not exactly a sculpture. When I showed it to them, my work had an effect on students and teachers…it has been lasting. They became more respectful of the material they are privileged to work and better about wasting it. They also began to see value in nature, things that they had previously taken for granted. They were also emboldened to explore the potential of whimsy in their own designs. Then, one day, Krenov and I were gone.

With medical breakthroughs and healthier lifestyles, health issues of older people are less of a problem, hence we see an increase in life expectancy, but even though many have valuable experience (not only in their field of employment, but also, raising children, community service, etc.), they are not able to compete with younger people. And the discriminatory hiring practices they face are effectively just like racism and chauvinism. Unlike discrimination by race, sexual orientation or ethnicity agism is accepted and legal.

Youth is regarded as more energetic, healthy creative, cooperative and flexible. Would you rather work with attractive, energetic, enthusiastic, optimistic playmates or cynical, moody people, who have no future and have obviously failed or wouldn’t need to still be working? But what is the difference between this attitude and race-based preferences?

Since every old person was once young and since, when they were young, they learned to view aging as a pejorative, as they get older, they view themselves in this way. We’d be amazed to hear Jews apologizing for the Holocaust, yet this kind of thinking is implicit in media images of older people and in ads for retirement plans, drugs, medical care and notably, Internet ads for sexual enhancements and dating. Young people also learn to expect that they may be living one day in that unique form of cohabitation we call, “residential care”; places where people are expected to be useless and dependent

AARP, the organization that proposes to advocate regarding issues of aging, is committed to an agenda that is analogous to improving conditions of child labor or slavery as opposed to ending slavery and exploitation. AARP and associates like Cornell and Stein institutes on aging, etc., are funded and supported by drug companies, health insurers and residential care real estate development firms but there are also tax-supported public agencies that have made a business of the age-related paradigm of dependence.

This dependency syndrome is now stumbling over issues related not only to the general economic malaise, but also, to the way Social Security and Medicare funds are effected by inflation resulting from financing warfare during the last half century and the way public sector employees funded their own exclusive retirement program by neglecting investment in economically sustaining infrastructure and programs. With the failed economy competing in a global labor market, this idea backfired with the result that millions of them are out of work, too, and no one is able to retire. The median age of the workforce is increasing but there fewer employment opportunities for older citizens.

One effect is that older people are returning to school to obtain credentials for new job opportunities but the number of young and foreign-born students in colleges is also increasing. Some opportunities for employment are opening in higher education but 30% of Americans currently hold bachelor degrees and with life expectancy increasing the ratio of educated workers in the workforce to available jobs means things must get worse for people regardless of their level of education. Historically, government projects that create private employment have mitigated high unemployment but the additional burden of failed retirement programs coupled with lower death rates multiplies the burden.