Ant says

An open letter to Jeffrey Loria

Mr. Loria,

I’ll fuckin’, I’ll fuckin’ tie you to a fuckin’ bedpost with your ass cheeks spread out and shit, right?  Put a hanger on a fuckin’ stove and let that shit sit there for like a half hour;

Take it off and stick it in your ass, slow, like, tssssssss.

Yeah.  I’ll fuckin’, yeah, I’ll fuckin’ lay your nuts on a fuckin’ dresser.  Just your nuts, laying on a fuckin’ dresser, and bang them shits with a spiked fuckin’ bat.

Oh.  What’s up?  BLAWW!!

I’ll fuckin’—I’ll fuckin’ pull your fuckin’ tongue out your fuckin’ mouth and stab the shit with a rusty screwdriver—BLAWW!! 

I’ll fuckin’—

I’ll fuckin’— 

I’ll fuckin’ hang you by your fuckin’ dick off a fuckin’ twelve sto — story building out this motherfucker.

I’ll fuckin’…

I’ll fuckin’ sew your asshole closed.

And keep feedin’ ya

And feedin’ ya

And feedin’ ya

And feedin’ ya

six days in

I can do this.  I can do this.  I can do this.  I can do this.  I can do this.

The 115 dollar lightbulb.

Got a job.  Starts Monday in Jacksonville.  So I’m moving 300 miles (again) on Saturday.

About a week ago, I got pulled over on my way home from work around midnight.  I was no more than a minute away from home, when I see a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy pull into traffic behind me.  And then, of course, flashing blue lights.

No, I wasn’t speeding; there was a guy on a scooter in front of me.  Either way, I offered over my license, registration, and proof of insurance with a polite smile.  He walks back to his car.  I don’t know why I’ve been stopped.

Fifteen minutes of waiting later, because it was the end of the month and this dude was running everything he could think of, this cop comes back up to my window.  

I had a burnt out headlight.  Shucks.  Had no idea.  Sorry, officer.  

I take my ticket, go home, go to bed.  Then, in the morning, off I went to Walmart, came home with my lights, installed them, and stapled the receipt to the summons.  

Today I finally managed to get down to the courthouse.  

Pay ten bucks to park, because it’s downtown Ft. Lauderdale and that’s how it works.

Waited in line, sweating in a room that hasn’t known air conditioning… well, ever, as far as I could tell.

I made it to the window:

“Hi, I got a ticket for having a blown lightbulb.  I fixed it.”

Okay, sir.  There’s a mandatory fee of $115, or you can plead not guilty and get a court date in thirty to sixty days.

Now, I don’t know if anybody else has this problem, or if it’s just me, but do you ever find yourself spending all your time waiting for the other shoe to drop?  Because as long as I can remember, I’ll get one step forward and then almost immediately get kicked in the nuts three steps back.

Because here’s the thing.  I get paid every Thursday from the job I just left.  So when I put my $302.94 paycheck in the bank this morning, I had $388.  Cool.  Two hundred of it is spoken for in the form of October’s rent to my roommate in St. Augustine.  I get my last check from Publix next Thursday, and I wait another two weeks before my first check from the new job.  Cool.  I can handle that.

What I can’t handle is getting charged $115 over a lightbulb.  One hundred, fifteen United States dollars.  Over a lightbulb.  

I don’t think people understand what it means to be “the working poor.”  Even when you do manage to do something right, like get a good job, in your field, that comes with a good salary and benefits, all it takes is one simple thing like a burnt-out lightbulb to get you well and truly boned.

Because I can’t NOT pay rent.  I certainly don’t have the time or money to contest a misdemeanor traffic citation from across the state.  

“Hey boss, can I get some time off so I can spend more in gas and legal fees fighting this ticket than it’d cost just to pay it?” is not a great way to start off your new career.

And so now here I am, with sixty dollars.  Which will buy me gas to get to St. Augustine.  And it will buy me gas to get to work and back for the next week.  Which I need.

What I was going to spend that $115 on—frivolities like food, an alarm clock, laundry detergent—now go out the window.  I can get to the new job.  It’s just that I’ll be hungry, late, and wearing dirty clothes when I do. 

All because of a light bulb.

Fun and games and death and taxes

A while back I got some forms from the good people at the Internal Revenue Service.  It would seem I underreported my income for the year 2009.

I explained to them over the phone that I’m not a tax cheat or anything like that, I’m just… you know, stupid.  No crime against that, right?

Today I went for a drive to go visit the IRS.  

First I missed my turn.  Because the sign for 6th Avenue was about six inches or so behind ANOTHER sign.  Wound up on University and Nova.  In the city of Davie.  

Way out of the way, in other words.

Finally, I make it to the office, go through the metal detector, and the first thing I see is a sign.

…ohmygodyougottabekiddingme

When I went in, the guy behind the counter explained that:

1.  The sign was up from yesterday and nobody noticed it was still up.  How you don’t notice a big neon-green sign first thing in the morning is beyond me, but whatever.  I would like a ticket, please.

2.  The wait time is going to be hours.  Literally hours.

3.  There are no offices I can go to in the Ft. Lauderdale area.  Offices are in Plantation, where I was, Miami, West Palm, and Ft. Meyers.

4.  He recommends showing up around 8 and waiting for the place to open so as to cut down on the inevitable wait.

Splendid.  

I’m not a political guy.  At this point, I don’t care if the country goes hard right and abolishes the IRS altogether, or goes hard left and takes all my money, in exchange for which I get health care and bullet trains and other things the Swedish take for granted.  But pick one and step on the gas, because the way it’s set up right now isn’t working for me.  It really isn’t.

And then.

AND THEN.

As I’m getting off 595 and taking I-95 north, I reach the end of my cigarette.  Rather than litter (because I’m going green), I reach down for the Gatorade bottle half-full of water I use as an ashtray.

And the instant I hear the *pst* of the butt extinguishing, it hits me what I just did, and I scream, “Son of a BITCH.”

Because now I have a Gatorade bottle three-quarters of the way full of the delicious, thirst-quenching, chock-full-of-electrolyte taste of Lemon-Lime Gatorade and it has a cigarette butt floating in it.

tl;dr:  I feel like God has my nuts in a C-clamp and He won’t let go.

Used to be that whenever shit got too heavy, too annoying, too whatever, I had places I could go to.  I could just be me.  And not have to think.

Ten, twelve years ago when I was a teenager and allowed to be a slacker, I’d go over to Kavita’s.  We’d hang out, stay up all night, play video games, watch movies.  Maybe walk over to the 7-Eleven.  

We’d spend a lot of time at the movie theater.  I don’t know how many times we saw Fellowship of the Ring.

But she moved across the county, and I didn’t have a car, and we didn’t get to see all that much of each other.

So tonight, when all I wanted to do was to go and play Mario Kart, get drunk, and pass out around 4 in the morning, I couldn’t.  Instead I went to the movies.

All that was starting at 9:40 was Cars 2, and that in 3D.  

So much for the movies.

And that’s how I wound up at a bar, wondering why it is that people who spend hours perfecting their affectations to not give a fuck will look down on people who genuinely don’t.  Wondering why it is that I was there.

And deciding that you really shouldn’t live in your own hometown.