September 1, 2004

The world has been askew the last week or so.

In how many ways? Oh, in many many ways.

It started last Friday innocently enough. I had a poker game to go to in the eve and had some time to kill, so I decided to go down to Drake Park and mill around with my camera, looking for interesting stuff to shoot. I made it barely ten paces from my car, when this homeless guy starts yacking at the side of my head. He tells me he's the "Birdman" (Alcatraz comes to mind) and proceeds to point out that there is a pair of Bald Eagles that hang around Mirror Pond. Allright - interesting enough.

Minutes later though, some goth kid starts yacking at the other side of my head. I can't tell if he's severely ADD, just weird, or is trying to pick up on me in some sort of odd oedipus way (I am at least 15 years his senior). Curious that I am though, I entertain him for a while, and learn that he lives on $141 a week, and the only hot meal he gets is heating a can of soup with a propane lighter - and the free hot dogs some charitable organization distributes on Friday nights at the park. Aha. That explains the rather large gathering of black-clad youths, hanging around like some gothic murder of crows.

The kid also sports a very odd name, which, after some deeper inquiry, turns out to be an alias - his real name is Chris. I ask him why he hangs around the park and what he generally does while he's here, and he says that he's got nowhere else to go, and that him and his friends like to just chill, or sometimes wrestle. He proceeds to tell me about the many fights he's had ... and bla bla bla ... I'm bored.

I decide it's time to hightail it outta here, so I jump back in my car, feeling momentarily guilty about driving a luxury automobile while people out there live on $141 a week. But I make a mental note to myself to come back and photograph these odd creatures, if just for documentary purposes.

As it turns out, my poker game falls through that night.

Since then more odd things have accumulated: I come upon a nasty accident one day; manage to piss my good friend Adam off on another day; clients have not been getting their invoices from me or have forgotten to pay them; my cat has been aloof and vanishes for days; and MCI charges me 43 bucks for a 22 minute long distance phonecall to Washington State, although I have cancelled my service with them months ago.

So what it is, I ask? Maybe it's the evil mojo of a large gathering on Republicans in one place, seeping through the fabric of the universe, or something ...

On The Bright Side: I've been poking around the Mac G4 my friend Jaume in Switzerland has asked me to bring him from the States (it's got Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed on it - something that's impossible to get in Europe). He urged me to make myself familiar with the machine, so that I can pretend it belongs to me when asked at Swiss customs.

Damn, that G4 is a nifty little machine. And so pretty. Could make me almost want to buy one... I find the DVD player, and decide to try it out. It's so cool. Hubby can watch his mind-numbing cable sports, while I get me some eye-candy movie. Too bad I have to give it back to Jaume in two weeks...