Portland

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

like I said.  Its pretty much sucked for about the last 15 years straight.  It WAS fun long ago though.  (Im actually about an hour south of Sac).  Im pretty much over big cities now anyway.  I would much rather live in Sonora or Santa Cruz or something.  The place Im at now is pretty shitty, though.

Big cities are the way to go.

They are much easier to disappear in.

Just sayin.......

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Near the corner of _____ and _____, there is an old brown house with an old grey car in front of it.  This is the house of an artist, and not just any artist, this artist is really like Mary Shelley in that she feels she has to be miserable.  Why she feels this way is unknown; perhaps she feels that she must be punished for being herself, or perhaps she just feels she isn't worthy of happiness.

So she does her art, and it's really good, and she does her thing, and she feels really bad.

As time goes on, the house will develop a miasma of sadness and regret, and eventually - after the children have grown up and learned to fly - it will become "that house" with the old lady with the crazy eyes that scares the scabs off the local yuppies.  She will appreciate that on a level that even she doesn't understand.

Eventually, she will pass, as do we all, and the house will remain.  And it will remember.  People will rent it or buy it, but they won't stay, because there's just something not right about the place.  People will feel sad when they're there, for no reason whatsoever, and maybe they'll hear and smell the kilns operating in the studio that is now a rec room.

And the house will fall into disuse and neglect, but it will remember. 

Years after The Incident (for eventually there is always an Incident), when archaelogists are sifting through the remains of The City, they will find the remains of this house, and the remains of the kilns and racks stuffed away in a corner of the yard.  And in one of these kilns, they will find a small stone shaped like a human heart.  They will assume that it is a sculpture of some kind.

They'll be wrong.

Or kill me.

[LMNO]

wow.





That's one hell of a punchline, Rog.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

wow.





That's one hell of a punchline, Rog.

Thanks.  I'm having an Oscar Wilde morning.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

People are proud of The City, and they're proud of their country.  They don't know WHY, but they sure as hell are, if for no other reason than that it is expected of them.  Even the lowest cur loves his country, right?  This is what they are told, and this is what they believe, no matter how bad things get.  And they see themselves as Americans.

But there are other people, those people walking, those people under the bridge, and the meth scars are upon them, and they are the cast-offs, the dust of the Earth, the forgotten.  And what the happy people don't think about, won't think about, can't think about is that these, too, are America.

So when you're driving through The City, and you see those people walking, remember that they are your own, they are your kith and kin, and they are your indictment, like some horrible leper at your party, there to remind you that there is a price for our complacency, and the misery of their lives are that price.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Near the corner of _____ and _____, there is an old brown house with an old grey car in front of it.  This is the house of an artist, and not just any artist, this artist is really like Mary Shelley in that she feels she has to be miserable.  Why she feels this way is unknown; perhaps she feels that she must be punished for being herself, or perhaps she just feels she isn't worthy of happiness.

So she does her art, and it's really good, and she does her thing, and she feels really bad.

As time goes on, the house will develop a miasma of sadness and regret, and eventually - after the children have grown up and learned to fly - it will become "that house" with the old lady with the crazy eyes that scares the scabs off the local yuppies.  She will appreciate that on a level that even she doesn't understand.

Eventually, she will pass, as do we all, and the house will remain.  And it will remember.  People will rent it or buy it, but they won't stay, because there's just something not right about the place.  People will feel sad when they're there, for no reason whatsoever, and maybe they'll hear and smell the kilns operating in the studio that is now a rec room.

And the house will fall into disuse and neglect, but it will remember. 

Years after The Incident (for eventually there is always an Incident), when archaelogists are sifting through the remains of The City, they will find the remains of this house, and the remains of the kilns and racks stuffed away in a corner of the yard.  And in one of these kilns, they will find a small stone shaped like a human heart.  They will assume that it is a sculpture of some kind.

They'll be wrong.

Or kill me.

Chills. and

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

San Francisco is not only inferior to Portland and Seattle in every possible way, it is also inferior to Oakland and, for that matter, Sacramento.

Wow... was going to argue about the Sacramento part, but then...

I couldn't. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

San Francisco is not only inferior to Portland and Seattle in every possible way, it is also inferior to Oakland and, for that matter, Sacramento.

I don't know, RCH.  The City seems the same to me, everywhere I go.  The background changes, but the problems and the good parts seem to vary only in their visibility.  If it's possible to have a good time in Tucson, it's possible to have one anywhere.

Likewise, even Naperville and Beverly Hills have homeless people.

It's The City, RCH, and you carry it everywhere you go.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Near the corner of _____ and _____, there is an old brown house with an old grey car in front of it.  This is the house of an artist, and not just any artist, this artist is really like Mary Shelley in that she feels she has to be miserable.  Why she feels this way is unknown; perhaps she feels that she must be punished for being herself, or perhaps she just feels she isn't worthy of happiness.

So she does her art, and it's really good, and she does her thing, and she feels really bad.

As time goes on, the house will develop a miasma of sadness and regret, and eventually - after the children have grown up and learned to fly - it will become "that house" with the old lady with the crazy eyes that scares the scabs off the local yuppies.  She will appreciate that on a level that even she doesn't understand.

Eventually, she will pass, as do we all, and the house will remain.  And it will remember.  People will rent it or buy it, but they won't stay, because there's just something not right about the place.  People will feel sad when they're there, for no reason whatsoever, and maybe they'll hear and smell the kilns operating in the studio that is now a rec room.

And the house will fall into disuse and neglect, but it will remember. 

Years after The Incident (for eventually there is always an Incident), when archaelogists are sifting through the remains of The City, they will find the remains of this house, and the remains of the kilns and racks stuffed away in a corner of the yard.  And in one of these kilns, they will find a small stone shaped like a human heart.  They will assume that it is a sculpture of some kind.

They'll be wrong.

Or kill me.

I wrote that?

ooooo...I should get poisoned more often. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah, it's fucking good. Made the hair on my arms stand up.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Yeah, it's fucking good. Made the hair on my arms stand up.

Good.   

I remember writing it, just not what I wrote.

I mean, I wasn't totally out of it, just messed up.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

They loom over the yard, the new townhouses, and Old Lady Mabel's yard too. Beige pressboard, they popped up in two weeks, built by workers who don't speak the native tongue and are willing to work on holidays and weekends for less pay than the few manual laborers left who were born here. They do a better job, too, with fewer expectations, because they're grateful, and they don't qualify for unemployment.

The parts of the yard they shadow are not so large, nor so significant. They leave in sun the persimmon and the apricot, the raspberries, the grape and the fig. What they shadow is so much larger. They are selling for half a million dollars, these new townhouses that are built where the old Head Start was, and after that the revival church. Old Lady Mabel's house never sold for that much. Maybe ten thousand, back in the day. They don't cast a shadow on her yard, to the south of them, and the neighborhood is grateful because she has been gardening in that yard for long enough that the soil is rich and crumbly and black, and anything she plants springs up in a few weeks time as lush and nourishing as Eden. She tends her rows hunched over in a flowered housedress, white-haired and slow, dark brown skin and sweet grandma voice telling you what crops she likes to plant in which seasons. "I do love the sound of chickens", she says, smiling, passing bundles of collards and mustard over the fence to her neighbors, "Always have, since I was a girl".

The townhouses don't care whose yards they oppress with their height and their sameness. They don't care about Old Lady Mabel and her stories. The people who build them don't care, because they are working and it's a paycheck to help feed their families. The investors don't care, because real estate is a surefire way to maximize their investments. Real estate never loses. Right? Right?

In the neighborhood, neighbors who bought at market peak couldn't sell their houses for what they paid, but maybe the new townhouses will change all that. Half a million! That could bring housing values up for everyone! Make our homes worth more than we paid for them, so much more. So we can leave. So we can get the hell out of the shithole neighborhood with the old lady who grows her own food and the crazy people with the chickens. A grand or so extra taxes per year is so worth it, if we can refinance and buy that Prius we've been wanting to go with our green lifestyle. And maybe the new neighbors will be the kind of people we've been wanting to live near, people with nice things, clean things, and no dirt in their yards. Maybe, just maybe.

Maybe all those good things will happen, and the new neighbors will pay their half-a-million dollars to move into those new green-construction townhouses, and everything will be so clean and so nice, and the new neighbors will complain to the city about the chickens, and the new neighbors will drive the property values and the property taxes up until Old Lady Mabel and the crazy people with the chickens can't afford to live here anymore, and the neighborhood will be so nice then, won't it? We can have such lovely dinner parties.

Or maybe, just maybe, the people with nice things, clean things, lovely earth-friendly things won't be able to look twice at those half-million-dollar townhomes with green construction and no yards, and they'll sit vacant for years, until the investors pull out and the contractor goes bankrupt and property values continue to slide and maybe the city will step in and force them to lease it to the Headstart program, or maybe they won't, but either way Old Lady Mabel will keep on growing her garden, and the crazy people with the chickens will go on trading eggs for greens. And no one will buy a Prius, or get out from under their mortgage, and the neighborhood will never, ever, get any better.

[Jenne]

all around.  Great shit, Guys.

[rong]

the best times i ever had in any city was in detroit.  there's a certain amount of respect you seem to get in detroit.  sort of a "you're not afraid to go out after dark, you must be alright.  but, also, i'm not gonna fuck with you just in case you're one of the crazy fuckers that's not afraid to go out after dark." vibe.  i'm pretty sure, roger, if you keep following the rabbit hole all the way down to the bottom, you will eventually find yourself in detroit.

i used to live in saint paul, too - there's a really awesome bar on the corner of 7th and Wacouta, but other than that, it pretty much sucks.  then i moved to a 1st tier 'burb north of minneapolis, that sucked even more.  i kinda miss flameburger, and being able to walk to the auto parts store in the time it took to smoke one cigarette was convenient.  but it's hard to sleep when someone sets your neighbor's truck on fire.  and $5.35 for a 12 ounce mug of tap beer (MGD) is fucking retarded.

i did some partying in chicago, but they seemed to proud of themselves there.  they're all, "ooooh - look at us, we live in chicago.  we're so urban!"

i'll take living in the Woods over the City any day.  sometimes i go weeks without seeing a stop light.

[The Johnny]

Sometimes people go missing in Portland, and sometimes they find TOO MANY bodies.  Or, to be specific, bodies that they can't match to a missing person report.  These bodies are called "floaters", and they happen when someone decides they have a need to step off of one of the many convenient bridges that are there for that purpose.

If the currents don't drag them away past Astoria, they wind up in eddy pools after being dragged along the bottom on their faces.  When you get them back, they have no face, no teeth, no fingerprints, and usually no remaining tattoos and/or scars.  Given that the city no longer has the cash to run DNA tests, the bodies remain unidentified, and are sent up the stack of the morgue's incinerator a year later.

So you have some missing people, and some found people...and either way, their families never learn what happened to them.