I go back to work in 2 months. I'll be able to work relatively independently, have some research money, and pursue my own ideas without a stream of people constantly messing with me -- interfering, asking annoying questions, assigning me mindless busy work, etc, and most importantly, not have to worry about the scumbags in Congress holding the Federal budget hostage and cutting my job. Yet another thing I've found to hate about American. Time for me to GTFO of what is turning into a shithole of a country. Thank you BAby Boomer scum. At the same time, I'm really nervous about it because the particular disorder that I'll be studying is a new area of research for me, and I'll be expected to be up-to-speed and perform as an expert on my first day. Compounding the difficulty is the fact that I've got to move overseas and be functional in a foreign language.
I have mixed feelings about starting over in a foreign country. For one thing, all of my stuff, my friends, and every thing I'm familiar with is here. On the other hand, this country has gone down the toilet, and I really don't like it here any more. To put it briefly, the politics, the socio-economic condition, the selfishness and total lack of empathy fo the populace, and the culture, especially the anti-education leaning, just rub me the wrong way.
What isn't in storage or sold, I'll put in a shipping crate and send to myself by boat.
Until then, I'm trying to get as much out of my vacation time as possible. But for whatever reason, my gf with whom i'm living is trying hard to make that impossible. Just this morning, she woke me up at 7 am screaming at me in this castrating, shrill voice that most of my gfs seem to do after they know me well enought to let their true personality show. Why do all of my gfs turn out to be shrieking shrews? She said a lot of mean hateful womanly things that only someone who knows you well (such as in my case, my own mother) can think to say.
I spent almost all of last year away from her. Before that, she had turned into a witch and would scream at me and threaten me for no reason. it was like she was permantly PMSing, but in hindsight, I see that it wasn't her hormones. She's just another nasty, vile person I have let into my life. Because my own childhood was a living hell, I thought this behavior was normal female behavior and gave just about anybody a free pass, including my crackwhore xgf Psycho Suzie.
When you are no longer fat (yes, she got fat during the year we spent apart), can run 50 miles in one stretch, can bench press 400 pounds (twice your body weight), have multiple college degrees, then I would consider her words, but until she says something intelligent or can perform some impressive feat or has a skill in something besides watching TV....then she's makes no more sense than a mean barking dog.
At the time, she was not working and I was supporting her. She was kind of like a female gigolo. All the progress she made, she screwed up when she spent the spring with her parents. If anybody has seen the first 5 minutes of Idiocracy, that's her parents in that 5 minute segment of the movie-- the white trash family who spawn what, in several hundred years, will become a nation full of moronic throwbacks.
When I first met her redneck parents and leanred about her several dozen white-trash half brothers and half sisters, many of them named "Bubba," I was tempted to run. Her father is a doddering retiree, a quasi-fascist right wing "libertarian," the non-thinking demographic that fox news caters to. He's practically illiterate. Can read instructions written in simple english, but has never read a book in his life. He came of age during the post war economic boom when jobs that paid fair, living wages were plentiful. If an idiot like that were trying to make it today, he'd be at McDonalds at minimum wage.
Her mother is a retired kindergarten teacher who herself only can read at the 5th grade reading level. She told me this. She has a neurological disorder and epiliepsy which makes her functionally retarded. I was willing to give her a free pass as well becasue of her mental disability. But because of this, she married a borderline retarded man who already had 13 children. One thing that stupid never does is to try to make itself not stupid.
But I decided to give her a chance and not judge her by her family. After all, I grew up under worse coniditons and with worse family than hers. I made an effort to pull myself out of that form of misery and poverty and escape that miserable lifestyle. And she showed signs that she was doing the same. I naively trusted her.
Briefly, my father was a lazy drunk who faked an injury while in the military so he could collect disability payments for the rest of his life and never have to work again. He would eventually drink/chain_smoke himself to death and die of cancer over a 3 year period of chemotherapy costing millions of dollars and paid for by US tax payers, with the typical right-wing libertarian irony of opposing universal health care. My mother was the perfect match for him. She was a wire monkey out of Harry Harlow who was pleased to have found a guaranteed monthly check to marry. She spent most of her waking life sitting in front of a TV. Both of them were uneducated and only semi-literate. I spent my child hood in isolation in front of a TV set (the electric nanny) if you've seen the original Gene Wilder willie wonka. By watching TV, I saw that there was a better world out there and wanted to escape it. So I focused on getting an education. So when I find my self among these white trash types as an adult, I'm even more sickened.
I thought she was behaving this sway because she's unemployed and taking out her frustrations on me, but now she has a job and is doing it. Part of it is that
In San Francisco itself and within a day's drive/train ride of the city, there are lots of things to do. My main interests are sports (doing sports, not watching others have all the fun and play the sports on TV or something) and art/culture. The sports I like are all solo, except for volleyball which I'll play as long as there is a keg and marijuana going around. I enjoy back packing, mountain climbing, and cycling, and fittingly, there are mountains, forests, national parks, and the ocean.
I'm thinking of trying surfing here in the ice cold Pacific.
There are also plenty of museums and other cultural venues. I'm also reading everything I can to get up to speed for my new job. Lucky for me, the job is in a country where 6 weeks of annual vacation time and a maximum work week of 35 hours is mandatory.
Drugs are another thing I enjoy. That and I'm enjoying the last few weeks I'll have for doing dope. I'm told that there is virtually no heroin in the city where I'll be living, but subs (never tried it) is everywhere. To get any dope, I would have to ride a train 2 hours to some place like Amsterdam and buy it on the street.
Without external pressures such as the deadlines and demands of a job or school, I tend to get in a rut and become lazy and depressed. When I was alone in the desert, I had some difficult days. Some days, I get less done than I would had I been working full time. I also sleep more (8 - 10 hours as apposed to 6 - 8 hours when working) So for me, opiates are instant motivation. I didn't realize I was hooked until my motorcycle trip. Without any drug, getting started in the morning was tough. All I wanted to do was lie around in my sleeping bag, whether it was the beach, in a field, or even a tree. And the aches and pains of sitting on a motorcycle 8 hours a day were amplified.
I panicked today. I've been looking for somebody who will sell me more than a gram at a time so I don't have to keep going to the Tenderloin or the Mission to cop. I walked from United Nations Plaza up Pill Hill along L****. The first intersection I crossed was cordoned off to cars, and the street was full of firetrucks ambulances and police cars. There were police all over the place.
Down the street toward my right, smoke was spewing out of the upper windows of one of the tenements. I crossed through it and met somebody who sells fair quality dime bags. She looked like she was about 16 years old and reminded me of the girl in the movie "Precious." As I was talking to her about what I wanted, a one-legged guy in a wheel chair rolled up and offered to sell me ounce blocks. They (Precious and the guy in the wheel chair) started arguing. Buying in bulk sounded fantastic. Maybe I can get a better quality or cheaper price. Maybe he's just a scammer selling bags of schwag. I didn't want to burn any bridges so I bought a couple of dime bags from Precious, and then went with the wheel chair guy. I follow him, staying about 10 feet behind (yeah, I'm that paranoid about being spotted buying because cops watch from the 5th floor (top) windows of some of the apartments with binoculars and radio down to undercover cops to bust seller and buyer alike.
Finally, he has me wait on a crowded street corner. The smell of marijuana is strong here and 10 more people separately offer me chiva. I wait about 5 minutes and he's across the street. maybe waiting for his supplier to weigh out a chunk. I don't know. More people offer me chiva. One guy puts his hand on my shoulder and offers me chiva. By now, I'm aching all over, my nose is running, and anxiety is building. I had already gotten enough to feel better for a day and left, put a tiny piece under my tongue and went to a coffee place to drink coffee, fix my shot in the bath room, and study for a while.
as he rolls several blocks.
