Birthdays and Tomorrows

Zum Geburtstag, Richard Z. Kruspe, who turns 42 today. May your day be filled with love and liquor, or love, Bengay, and a heating pad if that's your druthers.

As for me, I've whiled away the on the Internet, played Mario Golf, and watched Live aus Berlin. Productive, I know, but it's just too damn hot to do much else. Temperatures have exceeded 100 degrees for nearly a week, and the geriatric wall unit with which my apartment is furnished can scarcely beat the muggy heat. Matters are further hampered by a compressor that seizes if too much condensation freezes on it. In order to spare the motor, we have to turn it off for four-hour intervals. You can imagine my joy. Five minutes after the compressor chuffs into grateful silence, the indoor temperature rockets from 74 to 88.

Yes, living in Florida sounds so great in those glossy tourist brochures, but if you're not a wealthy retiree or a trust-fund baby slumming it as a bohemian beach bum, it sucks rocks. The heat is stifling and often medically dangerous for those who have trouble regulating their body temperature, the insects are myriad, many of them armed with stingers that belong in a Berlin sex shop, and the property and sales taxes are prohibitive. It's currently 8.5% here, and some local politicos want to raise it "just one cent" for their latest cause du jour. Another few cents, and I'll be paying $7.15 for mouthwash, which is currently the only dental care I can afford beyond toothpaste.

I love my bit of earth, but the rising cost of everything makes it hard to live here, and the city's infrastructure is buckling beneath the strain of too many people. There have been two power failures this week alone, and the sewer system is chronically dyspeptic. The university is admitting more students than it can adequately serve while reducing services and slashing the budget. The bus system is floundering, so much so that it has reduced services to the disabled. Now if you need to use the Dial-a-Ride program, you can only do so for "essential trips" such as medical appointments and the grocery store, and even the grocery store is not guaranteed. So you wanted to see a movie or just get out of the house before your brain began to soften from disuse? Too bad. Your need for social interaction isn't worth the gas it would cost to get you there. The normal coaches are falling apart because the bus company cut mechanics' hours. But hey, the Wi-fi works, even if the automated fare box isn't and insists on barfing out your dollar like a queasy drunk.

The rent goes up and services go down, and the poor neighborhood across the street lives in fear of eminent domain. The university has been eyeing their property for years, and with the current campus stretched at the seams, it won't be long until old people without a pot to piss in are deprived of their window to throw it out of so the university can wring tuition and books from one more starry-eyed idealist with money and privilege to burn. The city is gentrifying, you see, and old, thin, tired black women who've used up all their years and buying power just won't do. Not when the university needs the land on which their woodframe house sags for "luxury" student living.

I wonder how long it will be before I can no longer afford my three-room box or the university decides I've dallied too long on the path to education. I wonder where I will go when this protracted chapter of my life finally ends, because I'm not sure I can afford to stay here with cramped, inaccessible one-bedrooms commanding $600, more than half my monthly income. I don't want to go anywhere. It's hot and bug-infested and shoddy, but it's the closest home I've ever been, and if I'm to die and be buried, unmourned, in some unmarked pauper's grave, then I want it to be here, in the place where I felt safest and sanest and freest, the closest to "average", where I got to taste physical as well as intellectual freedom for the first--and probably last--time. I really lived here. It's only fitting that I should end here.

But with every lobbyist begging for "just" one penny, that dream recedes another step.

I can't fix that today, though, and likely not ever, and so rather than dwell on it, I'm going to eat chicken fingers and watch TV and perhaps fic, and tomorrow, I'm going to watch benign robot heroes from my childhood save the world.

If God had a voice recognizable to the human ear, he would sound like Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime.

Birthdays and Tomorrows

Zum Geburtstag, Richard Z. Kruspe, who turns 42 today. May your day be filled with love and liquor, or love, Bengay, and a heating pad if that's your druthers.

As for me, I've whiled away the on the Internet, played Mario Golf, and watched Live aus Berlin. Productive, I know, but it's just too damn hot to do much else. Temperatures have exceeded 100 degrees for nearly a week, and the geriatric wall unit with which my apartment is furnished can scarcely beat the muggy heat. Matters are further hampered by a compressor that seizes if too much condensation freezes on it. In order to spare the motor, we have to turn it off for four-hour intervals. You can imagine my joy. Five minutes after the compressor chuffs into grateful silence, the indoor temperature rockets from 74 to 88.

Yes, living in Florida sounds so great in those glossy tourist brochures, but if you're not a wealthy retiree or a trust-fund baby slumming it as a bohemian beach bum, it sucks rocks. The heat is stifling and often medically dangerous for those who have trouble regulating their body temperature, the insects are myriad, many of them armed with stingers that belong in a Berlin sex shop, and the property and sales taxes are prohibitive. It's currently 8.5% here, and some local politicos want to raise it "just one cent" for their latest cause du jour. Another few cents, and I'll be paying $7.15 for mouthwash, which is currently the only dental care I can afford beyond toothpaste.

I love my bit of earth, but the rising cost of everything makes it hard to live here, and the city's infrastructure is buckling beneath the strain of too many people. There have been two power failures this week alone, and the sewer system is chronically dyspeptic. The university is admitting more students than it can adequately serve while reducing services and slashing the budget. The bus system is floundering, so much so that it has reduced services to the disabled. Now if you need to use the Dial-a-Ride program, you can only do so for "essential trips" such as medical appointments and the grocery store, and even the grocery store is not guaranteed. So you wanted to see a movie or just get out of the house before your brain began to soften from disuse? Too bad. Your need for social interaction isn't worth the gas it would cost to get you there. The normal coaches are falling apart because the bus company cut mechanics' hours. But hey, the Wi-fi works, even if the automated fare box isn't and insists on barfing out your dollar like a queasy drunk.

The rent goes up and services go down, and the poor neighborhood across the street lives in fear of eminent domain. The university has been eyeing their property for years, and with the current campus stretched at the seams, it won't be long until old people without a pot to piss in are deprived of their window to throw it out of so the university can wring tuition and books from one more starry-eyed idealist with money and privilege to burn. The city is gentrifying, you see, and old, thin, tired black women who've used up all their years and buying power just won't do. Not when the university needs the land on which their woodframe house sags for "luxury" student living.

I wonder how long it will be before I can no longer afford my three-room box or the university decides I've dallied too long on the path to education. I wonder where I will go when this protracted chapter of my life finally ends, because I'm not sure I can afford to stay here with cramped, inaccessible one-bedrooms commanding $600, more than half my monthly income. I don't want to go anywhere. It's hot and bug-infested and shoddy, but it's the closest home I've ever been, and if I'm to die and be buried, unmourned, in some unmarked pauper's grave, then I want it to be here, in the place where I felt safest and sanest and freest, the closest to "average", where I got to taste physical as well as intellectual freedom for the first--and probably last--time. I really lived here. It's only fitting that I should end here.

But with every lobbyist begging for "just" one penny, that dream recedes another step.

I can't fix that today, though, and likely not ever, and so rather than dwell on it, I'm going to eat chicken fingers and watch TV and perhaps fic, and tomorrow, I'm going to watch benign robot heroes from my childhood save the world.

If God had a voice recognizable to the human ear, he would sound like Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime.