actual/factual

upon landing in salt lake city for my connection, the bastard got hisself some quiznos.

it wasn't so much with the good.

following, the bastard got hisself some more coffee to put on top of the quiznos.

by the time i had stuffed myself with more crap, worked my way across to gate 83 (yes fucking 83), i had begun to notice that sky west (the bastard's connecting airline) had alot of these kind of planes.

QUICK SIDEBAR: now the bastard has been doing so much air travel since...well since i started to work for killing stuff monthly. and over time, the bastard has gotten into the awful habit of just looking at what time and what airline and sometimes the flight number. as a result, the little piece of info regarding what kind of aircraft i'm getting into never really enters my mind.

that is until...

i get to the terminal and all i see are these effing crop dusters and that bastard is thinking, "what the fuck did i get myself into?" and "why the hell did i have to, you know, EAT something before getting on this ball park frank of a plane."

hell, i even contemplated the notion of going into the bathroom and just sticking my finger down my throat to save myself the trouble of tossing my cookies into the "for motion discomfort" bag.

wait.

i was supposed to think that, not type it.

anyway, i had this thought until they called our gate and i had to hump down to gate 40 (yeah gate 40. there's a gate 40 i have to walk to from gate 83, it's an eighth of a mile away) and i saw what i was getting on was this:


and truth to tell, it wasn'at all that much bigger than the other plane, actually, it was almost twice the size of the cropduster but, it had jet engines and that meant alot more to me than props out here in the mountains.

ok, in a nutshell, much better flight even though the inside of the plane was kind of the size of the plane that crashed into the mountain in the second indiana jones movie (sans the chickens of course). although i have to say this, maybe it's the people i was flying with, or maybe it's just the fact that small enclosed spaces make people a little batty but, most of these people were just rude or jusr maybe foregoing the usual niceties in the interest of getting off of this flying subway car.

but long story already long, i got on the ground in one piece despite the thermals that were banging the plane around as we came over the mountains getting into tucson, and the boy was happy to see me. and his hair is black.

—the bastard

...on the fhills

...or on local crap

so a few months back the local overpriced dry cleaner closed it's doors and construction started. one day the chairman, informed me that they were building a 7-11 over there. we think "sweet". now when it occurs to me, i can get my hands on corndogs and slurpees at 3am. actually, i was thinking that when i need a gallon of milk, i didn't have to go to the not so convenient store by my apartment that never has milk on a friday (there is no goddam reason the bastard has to buy a can of evaporated milk for his morning coffee). so i think good. the chairman on the other hand sees the obvious convenience of having a place he could float into in the middle of the night in his white suit riding in a carriage pulled by two sacks of money to buy late night whatnot. win/win, i say.

but the fhills says otherwise. according to another local (who alerted the chairman that we have our own adidas shoe named after our area, take that, team zissou, the community met with the local 7-11 owners who own another down the road a piece. locals bitched about 3am trucks and those omnipresent bored white kids (the chairman and i rate their graffiti as a 9.5 on the wackness scale) that haven't reached driving age and one commentor called for a boycott (to be fair there was only one commentor). and the bastard had a thought, "damn now you folks are gonna have to act like a neighborhood now, won't you?"

OK QUICK SIDEBAR: i mean look at this from the bastard's perspective, on my side of the ave, i have this annoying restaurant that keeps me from getting to bed. the locals don't boycott that place. no one in my area really likes the racket, or the smell of their garbage, or the landlady for that matter but it stays open. oh, i left out the garbage trucks that come at all hours, making a racket, stinking up the place. it's a necessary evil. someone has got to pick up the local business' trash. no matter how stinky it is. then we have the police. the police that does nothing about public nuisances in the area. in the case of my pet peeve, the owner of the restaurant bought them a horse and they not only turn a blind eye, they give him a placard so he can park illegally. he isn't a cop. why does he have cop perks? what the fuck? what the fucking fuck?

but the bastard digresses, yes that means that the neighborhood has to act like a neighborhood now. if you don't want the riff raff around, call the cops. if it's your kid, get in his/her business. if it's your neighbors kid, get in his business. when the bastard was young and kicking the dirt, i had a local father who knew my every move because he drove a cab in my hood. rather then rat me out to my dad, he would ask me why i was cutting school on such and such day, or why was i calling a cab at 4am or somesuch and yeah, it was a pain in the ass. but it kept me out of trouble. so i put it to you schmucks. if you don't like the riff raff, do something about the riff raff. do not squash local business, it's not like their going to replace it with a nice italian restaurant (like we need another one of those in the area). cause i not only call bullshit on boycotting the place, i'm gonna get me a frikkin' slurpee.

—the bastard

...on relief

...and moving forward

the bastard doesn't like to talk about work in specifics very often. i learned a valuable lesson when a young editor at a new york based magazine had herself a blog and she gave out all of the deets. then she got fired. but we're all kind of relieved over here at killing stuff monthly, we've been sold. next week we find out what kind of people the buyers are. oh, and i sure as shit ain't gonna say much more about it.

—the bastard