Life costs money: I'm looking at school in the spring time ($600-$800), fines from the pigs in Oregon (I jumped fare on the light rail on my way to work, got busted. I also ran a red light on my bicycle, same predicament. Total = $294) fines from the pigs in Utah (graff, and a separate charge from trespassing, um $350ish? ...), paying for an airline ticket to my bro's wedding in Hawaii ($450), settling some old shit($hahahaha), and publishing a zine ($300 or so, for 250 copies). A few thousand smackers, all in all. That's not so bad as Cam, who got smacked down a five grand lawsuit for the old Cunningham House. Yeah, right. Good luck getting that money, evil Total Property Management corporation. You can't get blood from a stone.

Good thing I just filed taxes. I can't believe I really only have less than five grand on the books this last year. I've been living the hobo dream all 2007, that's for sure. I definitely got my five thousand dollars' worth of life experiences. I couldn't ask for a better return... but I'm broke. When I was 19, I filed something like $34,000. I wonder when the next time that will happen. Hmmm.... never? I hate numbers, sometimes. They only serve to invalidate your humanity. I used to talk about this sort of thing with Blake a lot, about how money further abstracts the meaning of life away from you, forcing you to think about life in terms of dollars on the hour instead of in terms of vignette moments. The only thing that we could surmise is that money cannot be relied upon to measure the value of life. And in our respective instances, in accordance to, uh, (un)employment histories, it cannot be relied upon at all.

I've been watching the 2008 Elections rigmarole with mixed feelings. Is it really progress to have a biracial man or a woman as president? "It's just Slavery, Inc., either way" so saith my empathic peers. On a business level, I will offer that Pepsi is definitely the Republican Party. The Pepsi Generation refers to Reagan babies, i.e. generations X & Y. Richard Nixon himself endorsed the carbonated liquid poison as a personal favorite. Coca-Cola is totally the Democratic party. A classic, feel good sentiment, shiny veneer, dubious Warhol qualities. Meanwhile, there's political assassinations, strike breaking, and strangling neo-liberal capitalism underfoot. As long as you can keep buying up "healthy" drinks like Odwalla, and other juice companies, this uh, aquisition of credibility is somehow supposed to exonerate your pitiful Human Rights decisions. It feels nice to think that "Change" is more than a campaign motto, but I still think it's like a Coca-Cola advertisement, "Enjoy Life". In both instances, we're moving towards and counting on those goals, with or without your products, politics, and lies.

Of course, the upside is that George Bush is out. Oh, man, that does feel good. A man that will go down as "Worst Fascist Ever", criteria being based not necessarily on the amount of oppressive powered wielded, but how terribly mismanaged. Although our fellows on the Left have fondly favored the frequent comparison of "Dubya" to the Third Reich, can you imagine if Bush really was comparable to Hitler? We'd be in so much more shit if Bush had even a quarter of Adolf's populist charisma, and an eighth of his native intelligence. Bush was behind the wheel of the most powerful political machine the world has ever seen, the United States of America. The sporty little number was the fastest car on the planet, a flurry of Red Fury, Republican fever that has caused the country to go into hysterics, hallucinations, and pain. George drove it like a rental, right into the goddamn ditch, Budweiser cans spilling out. "Now, officers, I can explain. Here, let me call my dad...."

"Yeah, step the the fuck out of the car, sir." No more years.

However, don't you get so drunk on that ecstasy that you miss out on what's going on: He will merely be handing the wheel to a damaged mobile and the slavemaster's whip to the next man. Or woman.

Progress? Are we there yet?